


The Lone Wolf's Call

by juliafied



Series: The Lone Wolf's Call [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst and Tragedy, Minor Violence, Post-Game(s), Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 19:46:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20204536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliafied/pseuds/juliafied
Summary: Like it or not, decisions of the Inquisitor impact the whole of Thedas. Lavellan's choice to sacrifice Hawke in the Fade has unintended consequences, not least for a certain broody elf waiting for Hawke's return. Thus, a heartbroken Fenris embarks upon a journey across Thedas in search of retribution, reconciliation, and perhaps, peace... but his actions may well lead to the very fate Lavellan is fighting against. Contains minor violence, language, and occasional NSFW scenes (warnings in individual chapter summaries).





	1. The Letter

**Fenris gets some very bad news, accompanied by some very bad dreams. He starts wrapping up his business in Estwatch.**

* * *

Fenris spat bitterly on the ground and re-read the last sentences of the letter.

“_She meant so much to us both, and now she’s gone. I don’t know what to do, but I had to write you. If this reaches you, please come to Skyhold. Varric._”

The fucking dwarf was the last person Fenris wanted to see. Hawke had only gone to Ferelden as a favour for _him_, because they were friends and she wanted to help. Of course. If not for Varric, Hawke would still be _here_, in their humid room in the inn by the sea in Little Llomerryn, laughing in Fenris’ arms…

And now, she was dead.

He blinked tears out of his eyes and swallowed as sobs silently took hold of his chest. He imagined, morbidly, how it had happened. Varric said that she and the Inquisitor had gone _physically_ into the Fade; she had probably gone down killing some demon, he figured. They had battled plenty in Kirkwall when blood magic overwhelmed the city, and she had killed every one that came her way, daggers flashing in the light of fire blasts and electric surges, a spirited war cry on her lips. Felissa was stronger now than she had been then, too: why hadn’t that been enough? He pictured her, blades drawn, teeth bared, charging at an ogre-like beast as she wove around its legs deftly, finally leaping onto its back and driving a curved dagger through the base of its skull. He thought that, theoretically, the creature could have grabbed her, dashed her against the ground, but the images didn’t appear in his mind’s eye.

Hawke had seemed invincible, in both strength and spirit. Ever cheerfully sarcastic, even in the most bitter of circumstances. A slaver had charged at her in their most recent raid, and she laughed and quipped that hadn’t he heard of her? She cut him down with ease, and just like that, it was another victory in their ceaseless war against slavery in Thedas. Though Hawke always played the cynic, she had permeated their relationship with her own strange brand of optimism. Fenris’ surliness never got to her, and she pressed through their arguments and disagreements with a sort of confidence that Fenris had never experienced in his interactions with any other person. She had believed in them. She had believed in_ him_.

There was a knock at the door. Startled, he stood up, wiped his face, and walked over to it.

“Messere?”

He recognized the tentative voice of Iva, the innkeeper.

“Speak,” he growled, then softened. She had been nothing but kind to him. He opened the door. “Yes, Iva.”

The portly woman peered impatiently at him. “Messere Fenris, there’s some stew in the dining room if you’ll have it. Wilfred caught a big one today and it won’t keep for long.” She glanced at the letter, still in his hand.

“Thank you.” She nodded and he shut the door.

Glancing about the room, his eyes landed on the book of Fereldan folk stories Felissa had gifted him before she left. He then spotted the half-empty bottle of brandy on the table beside it.

“Fuck”, he muttered, and poured himself a glass with shaking hands.

As Fenris took a swig of the drink, he couldn’t help but wonder if Hawke would have been able to believe in him now. Would she be sure, with that same certainty, that he could go on without her? He could hear her voice in his ears. _Come on, there’s no way you liked me more than that sword of yours, and you’ve still got that, right? _

Putting the glass down and his face in his hands, he wept in earnest. He would never hear her voice again.

* * *

Fenris awoke the next morning still fully clothed, empty bottle next to him, following a thankfully dreamless sleep. The sun was already high in the sky by the time he stopped staring at the ceiling to glance at the empty bottle of brandy. Groaning, he rose, unsteadily, and stumbled out of the room and into the hallway.

“Iva!” he barked, “Do you have any of that Orlesian red?”

He passed the next few days much in the same manner as the night before. He slept very little, succumbing only when the alcohol or miserable exhaustion knocked him unconscious. Slowly, he examined Felissa’s remaining belongings: the ring bearing the family crest, whose honour she had so painstakingly restored in Kirkwall. He slipped it on and remembered its authoritative glint on her finger when meeting with the Viscount. He gripped the handle of a favourite aurum dagger that she had been forced to leave behind in favour of traveling light, but which was the first she bought with the money from the expedition. Her mother’s brooch, the last of the old Amell fortune, and the last of Hawke’s mementos of her mother. Lastly, there were her clothes: a few undershirts and some leggings. They still smelled of her, and Fenris buried his face in them as he thought of the places they had planned to go, but never would.

On the morning of the third day, after retching into his wash basin, Fenris encountered a moment of clarity. Could Varric have been mistaken somehow? His letter mentioned that he hadn’t _personally_ gone to the Fade. It had been Felissa, the Inquisitor, some associates of hers, and a Fereldan Grey Warden. If none of them had actually seen Hawke fall, then she could easily still be alive in the Fade. He didn’t know how these things worked, but surely such a possibility existed. Then, she could be freed, surely some damn mage could solve this problem, Feynriel certainly owed them one…

No, he realized. If Felissa was physically trapped in the Fade, she was as good as dead. And Varric, as an associate of the Inquisitor and long-time friend of Hawke, would have verified this information beyond a doubt. Fenris had to accept it. She was gone.

Staring at the empty bottles and inhaling the stench of several days’ worth of alcohol and despair around him, Fenris decided that enough was enough. She would have wanted him to carry on with their efforts. Before she left a month ago to help the Inquisition, Hawke had located a potential double agent in the Antivan slave ring operating out of Estwatch, selling as slaves those who did not suit servitude in the Antivan Crows. Fenris was supposed to establish a relationship with the contact while Felissa was gone but had been avoiding the meeting; Hawke had always been so much better with people than him. The agent in question was a minor Orlesian noble who, after being cheated by the Crows when purchasing slaves herself, would be more than willing to flip and provide information about the slave ring. She was still alive due to some connection between her family and the Crows, which was how she had been able to purchase slaves in the first place. The thought of dealing with her disgusted Fenris. However, she was their first lead in months and could prove to be the mechanism by which he would dismantle the Crow slaving operation once and for all.

On her monthly visits to conduct business in Estwatch, the woman usually stayed in a more expensive inn than Iva’s in the southern port district of Little Llomerryn, close to the warehouses where many business deals and meetings in the city took place. According to Hawke’s information, she frequented the port city armed with a more than adequate contingent of bodyguards prepared to deal with the dangers of the raider-controlled city. Fenris guessed that these bodyguards would not be immune to bribery, however, making his task a little easier. Fortunately, he would not need to wait for long: before he had received Varric’s letter, Fenris had been anticipating the noblewoman’s arrival, and preparing to make contact. Despite the few days lost to grief and liquor, he would continue with his plan, he decided. Hawke was gone, but he could honour her by working towards their shared goal: that no one else should ever share his torments at the hands of a slave master.

With his course of action decided, Fenris began taking stock of his physical condition. Based on the distinct lack of dirty dishes in the room and the abundance of empty bottles, he guessed he hadn’t consumed much of anything but alcohol in the past three days. Accordingly, his head was pounding, and he was extraordinarily hungry, but felt as if eating anything would cause him to vomit again. Making a half-hearted attempt to gather up the bottles on the desk, he gave up and instead fetched his coin purse. It had been considerably lightened, he realized unhappily. The ample coin he had seemingly paid the innkeeper for the liquor would have to be compensation enough for dealing with the squalid state of his room.

Venturing out into the hallway, he made his way to the dining hall. He spotted a few plates of bread, cheese, and some kind of smoked fish laid out on a serving table; it appeared Iva was still serving breakfast. He found her arguing with her husband, waving around a ladle menacingly.

“And what do you suppose I’m to do, Wilfred? Shit some out?”

“That would be the first useful thing that’s come out of your arse…”

“We’ll get more of the damn cheese when that Francois bloke comes back from Kirkwall, now— yes? Can I help you, messere?”

She scrutinised Fenris from behind the bar, clearly surprised to see him. Hawke would have laughed at their exchange. He smiled wryly.

“My apologies, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Wilfred had fled the threat of the ladle.

“It is no bother, messere, my fool husband’s grateful for it, I’m sure.” She paused. “How are you… feeling?”

He grimaced. “Not my best, but it will have to do. I have business in the port district today, and my rooms are in… disarray. Could you—”

“I’ll send one of the girls over when we’re done with breakfast,” she interrupted, giving a short nod. “The bread is heavy, that’ll help. Anything else you need?”

Iva was an experienced innkeeper, evidently. “No, Iva, that’ll be all. I— thank you.”

“It is my pleasure, messere.”

It certainly wouldn’t be the pleasure of the girl who would have to deal with the mess. Fenris took a piece of bread on his way out of the hall and left a silver on the desk once he returned to his room to gather his things. He looked at Hawke’s ring for a few moments before slipping it on. He’d have to figure out some way to get it to Bethany. He wondered if she had received Varric’s letter yet. No doubt he would have written her as well, though she would be hard to find after being smuggled by Aveline to Nevarra. Felissa’s dagger, he tied onto his belt after putting on his armour. Finally, the Blade of Mercy that had angered him so when Felissa had first given it to him, he strapped onto his back. As always, on his way out of the inn, he got strange looks from the other lodgers. Even after three months in Estwatch, people still weren’t used to the sight of an extensively tattooed elf with quite a large sword.

After purchasing some potions from Levyn, an apothecary associate of his and Hawke’s, Fenris made his way to the southern port district, looking for the Speckled Griffon, the inn where the noblewoman was purportedly staying. He found it by the time the sun was beginning to set. Entering the dining hall, he spotted an armed guard sporting the Thibault crest on her shield standing by the fireplace. He waved over the barkeep and sat in the corner of the room by a window, trying not to wince too much at the smell of the ale. Making eye contact with the guard for long enough eventually prompted her to approach him.

“Listen, elf, I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing but whatever it is, I’m working, so _please_ fuck off.”

Her heavily accented but unconcerned tone betrayed her boredom. He slid a gold coin across the table.

“_You_ may not be interested in what I have to say, but your mistress, Lady Amelianne, might be. If you might be persuaded to pass on a message to her…”

The guard had raised her brow at the mention of her employer’s name. She thought about it for a moment, then picked up the coin.

“Alright, I’ll bite. Who are you and what do you want?”

“I’m someone who might have some interest in the business your mistress is conducting here. Particularly, I’ve heard she might be looking for some ways to right past wrongs. I think I may be able to help.”

The guard looked at him skeptically.

“She’ll know what I mean. As I imagine she will be departing the city soon, I will wait here until midnight. Fetch me if she is willing to meet.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, grunted, and walked back to her spot by the fireplace. He had no doubt that she would approach her mistress about his offer after her shift change. It wasn’t every day that an ordinary Orlesian bodyguard got to participate in such vague and tantalizing intrigue.

Surely enough, two hours later, when another burly bodyguard wielding a large axe came to relieve her, the guard he had spoken to earlier went to her lady’s chambers and emerged again within a few minutes.

“You’ll speak to her in her chambers. I’ll not be allowing _that_, though,” she said upon approaching his table, gesturing towards his sword.

“Very well.”

He followed her to the noblewoman’s room in the tavern. Removing his sword and handing it to the guard, he entered the room, noting its size and luxury. Lady Thibault was not that minor of a noble, it appeared.

“My, my, aren’t you a curious creature. And the markings! Leontine mentioned, they are simply remarkable! Tell me, how does a fascinating specimen such as yourself find themselves here? With such intimate knowledge of my business here, no less?”

Lady Amelianne Thibault’s voice was as sharp as her gaze, and her suspicion of him was palpable. She was dressed simply for an Orlesian noble, and carried a dagger at her hip. He had to resist the urge to strangle her.

“Lady Thibault, the name’s Fenris and I believe that I share your concerns about some of the business that the Antivan Crows are conducting in Estwatch. I am aware that you may have some interest in seeing that business concluded. Am I correct?”

She laughed. “Yes, the Crows are right _batards_. I risk my reputation bringing valuable cargo into Jader, expecting to make a profit, and what do I get instead? Plague, every one of them! If you would see them gone and the cargo I am owed returned to me, I do believe our interests are intertwined. My question is, what is in it for you?”

“They are interfering with my own business. Call it eliminating the competition,” Fenris lied. It was all he could do not to spit in disgust. Entire lives meant nothing more to this Orlesian than an investment opportunity.

Lady Thibault shrugged. “Fair enough. But you still have not told me why you have approached me.”

“I require information. The location of their base of operations, the names of the ships transporting the cargo, descriptions of their leaders. Better yet, arrange to bring me to your next meeting.”

She thought for awhile. “An interesting proposal. I cannot bring you in, but I can tell you where it will be. However, my price is the entirety of the Crows’ cargo to do with as I wish.”

Fenris agreed to her terms and they shook hands, which Fenris suspected was the first time she had ever touched an elf. She described to him the location of the warehouse where her next meeting was to take place, the following afternoon. Leontine the guard followed him as left the noblewoman’s chambers.

“I’ll be there tomorrow, elf, in case you screw her. Be warned,” she growled as she handed back his sword. He suppressed a dry laugh. As if an Orlesian bodyguard could be any match for him.

It was not yet midnight when Fenris exited the inn. As he would likely require backup for his infiltration of the Antivan Crow slave ring, he decided to stop by a few former associates’ homes in the port district on his way back to Iva’s inn. Stagio was a Rivaini raider sympathetic to their cause who happened to be an excellent archer. He also welcomed the coin raiding slavers’ dens could bring, as they tended to leave valuable documents and weapons lying around. Reja, a casteless dwarf from Orzammar, was as deadly with a sword and shield as she was with a barrel of ale, and he had hired her as a mercenary on previous missions. He found her out-drinking an entire mercenary company in the Rat and Dragon tavern by the stockyards. Lastly, though Fenris still had a healthy amount of distrust for mages, years of working (and arguing) with Hawke had at least allowed him to appreciate having a healer in combat. Thus, he looked for Gideon in his tiny hut in the Little Llomerryn slum, reading a book on Orlesian Chantry history by candlelight. Like another healer Fenris had once known, Gideon’s desires for freedom for the mages made him sympathetic to the plight of slaves. He was excellent to have in a fight, as were the rest of their associates. They all agreed to meet Fenris outside of Iva’s inn the next morning.

Satisfied with the day’s events, Fenris returned to his room in the tavern. He even forgot his misery for a moment as he thought of writing to Felissa in Skyhold. She’ll want to know how tomorrow goes, he thought reflexively, and his heart dropped in his chest when he remembered. The tears came again, and he laid motionless in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about her.

Before Felissa left to help the Inquisition, they had been talking about the future, what to do once the Estwatch slavers had been stopped. Hawke had no desire to return to Kirkwall; though Bran, the provisional viscount, had brought some stability to the city, and Aveline remained as the captain of the guard, Hawke wanted to stay hidden. Even though she had killed Anders at the Gallows and the Chantry was no longer hunting her, she had started to want a simpler life. They had talked about buying a little house in Amaranthine, as the city had enjoyed reasonable stability in the years after the Blight, and Hawke was, after all, a Fereldan. Fenris had been torn, and it had led to many an argument: he wanted to continue to hunt down slavers. Now, the hypothetical cottage in Amaranthine was impossible, and yet he ached for it. There, he contemplated sleepily, Hawke would have been safe, and they would have had a life that he hadn’t dared to imagine while he still served Danarius…

_He was in his mansion in Hightown, and there was a book in front of him. _

_“Come on, Fenris, just one more sentence, don’t you want to know how Shartan first met Andraste?”_

_“Vishante kaffas, woman, I’ll toss this whole damn book in the fire!” _

_She gave him a sly smile from across the table. “Perhaps you need a different _kind _of encouragement.” _

_He chuckled and then sighed. She was so beautiful. “Perhaps. A bottle of some Tevinter swill might do, in this case.” _

_The wine was in the adjacent room. He picked out one of the less detestable varieties and walked back into what looked like Varric’s chambers in the Hanged Man to the sound of Felissa’s laughter. The bed and the fireplace had been moved around, though, and unfamiliar banners hung on the walls. She sat in a plush armchair playing cards at a table with Varric._

_“Cheater!” she objected, “You’ve been hiding that card all game, I _saw_ you!” _

_“Now look, Hawke, if you’re gonna be a sore loser, you might as well… catch me cheating with the right card!” Varric said triumphantly as he pulled a knight from his sleeve. Hawke’s cry of indignation quickly turned to laughter. They started another game. _

_“So, Hawke, how’s that Fenris of yours doing? I’m surprised he’s not here in Skyhold, guarding the entrance to our _highly exclusive_ game of Diamondback…”_

_Fenris furrowed his brow. This wasn’t the Hanged Man, then._

_Hawke smiled. “You know Fenris, broody as always. We’re working on something big in Estwatch right now. From his last letter, things are going well.” She sobered for a moment. “He’d never tell me, but I hope he isn’t too lonely. Little Llomerryn isn’t exactly the friendliest of cities.”_

_“Well, as long as you’re happy, Hawke,” Varric said with a thoughtful grin._

_She looked off into the fire. “I am.”_

_Tears pooled in Fenris’ eyes. He reached to wipe them away and suddenly he was shivering in a snowy alleyway, facing the door of a hovel. Lifting his hand to knock, he decided against it and pulled on the handle instead. It was a modest home; three plates were set on the simple dining table, and a door led to what Fenris assumed was a bedroom. A woman stood with her back to him, stirring the contents of a pot on the hearth. _

_“Sister?” The woman was Bethany. “The stew is almost done. Do you need any help?” _

_“No, that’s alright, I’m just dealing with yet another shit-related incident,” a slightly harried Felissa responded from behind the door. “We won’t be a moment.” _

_The door opened and Felissa emerged, washcloth in hand. She looked older, a few unfamiliar creases in her forehead._

_“Phew, another disaster averted. Isn’t that right, Lea? I swear, the sixth Blight’s going start right here in your nappy...”_

_Suddenly, Fenris couldn’t peel his eyes away from the child on her hip. The beautiful, elf-blooded child… _

_Then, Hawke locked eyes with him. The surroundings melted away and she was alone. _

_She reached out to him. “Fenris? Fenris, you have to help me, I—” _

He awoke in a cold sweat, face wet with tears. He wept not because of the dream, but because of the waking. What cruel tricks his subconscious played on him, showing him a future he never knew he wanted, and now could never have. He looked out the window. It was daybreak. The others would be waiting for him soon.


	2. The Warehouse

**Fenris finishes his work in Estwatch with the help of some friends and gets a little carried away in the process. He makes a strange discovery. Warning: this chapter has descriptions of violence.**

* * *

The child’s hair had been dark, and curly, like Felissa’s. Lea, after Leandra, probably. Tanned skin, like Fenris’ own, and—

“Alright, duster, we doing this or what?”

Reja, the dwarven warrior, had strolled up to where Fenris leaned against the wall in the alley next to Iva’s inn.

“Because I’m telling you, getting up this morning was not easy. There better be some good coin wherever we’re going,” she grumbled, scowling.

“There will be,” Fenris dourly replied. “Those we target have no shortage of gold.”

Reja nodded. “Good. Who else is coming?”

As if on cue, Stagio rounded the corner and waved curtly to them, bow in hand.

“Hello, Reja, Fenris,” he greeted them politely. “I suspect you’ll be going over the plan once our mage gets here, yes? Unless we don’t have a mage this time, which is quite alright as well.”

Stagio was almost endearingly meek and polite for a Rivaini raider with a face scar and an actual eye patch. Perhaps that was how he had stayed alive for so long in Estwatch. Fenris couldn’t imagine the man making many enemies.

“Damn, when’d you get the shiny new toy, Stagio?” Reja exclaimed, her eyes gleaming. “Must have cost a pretty penny.”

The Rivaini presented his bow for inspection.

“This Tevinter make, Stag’? How’d you get your hands on it?” Reja ran her hand over the smooth wood and drew the bow. “Enchanted, too. Nice.”

He shrugged. “We’ve been capturing more Tevinter ships than usual. This was in the captain’s quarters and I asked if I could have it. Not too many archers in the Armada, I’m afraid.”

“And what of the captain?” Fenris grunted.

“Dead. Mages never go down easy, though. Speaking of which, greetings!”

Gideon smirked as he approached the group. “Damn right, we don’t,” he boasted, but seeing the look on Fenris’ face, continued “unless, of course, we become abominations, in which case you are entirely welcome to slaughter us all wholeheartedly, no hard feelings. _Relax_, Fenris.”

Reja snorted and clapped a hand on Gideon’s back. “Yeah, it looks like your lady’s been gone too long, Fenris. Really lacking some _relaxation_, although I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again, the ladies at Jenny’s would be more than happy to help you out, they’d _love _those tattoos over there. How’s your Talia, anyway? Any idea when she’ll be back? She still owes me for that game of Wicked Grace, you know.”

Hawke traveled under an alias here. Reja looked at Fenris expectantly, but he was fixed in place, and it was all he could do not to snap, or worse, begin weeping again. But his associates did not deserve to be on the receiving end of his pain.

He forced himself to squeeze out a “She’s… fine,” and gave a half-smile to Reja. He was not… ready to speak of it, and besides, they had other things to discuss.

The group bantered amongst themselves for a few more minutes until Fenris gathered the strength to explain the mission to them. Pulling out a map of the southern port district, he pointed to a location marked with an “x”.

“The warehouse we will be infiltrating is here. I have it on good authority that a meeting between a buyer and the leaders of the slave trade in Estwatch will be happening this afternoon. I suspect they will be heavily armed, though I think it’s best if we observe the area for a few hours before the meeting happens. We’ll have access to the building through a sewer entrance somewhere on the southeast corner. Gideon, how are you for lyrium, and everyone else, for potions? We’ll probably need them.”

Gideon gave him a thumbs up while Reja and Stagio checked their packs.

Fenris continued. “There won’t be many mages this time, I think. We’re dealing mostly with Antivan Crow assassins, so expect traps and daggers. Stagio, if you could take out the more dangerous rogues before they’re able to disappear—”

“Of course.”

“—then Reja and I will deal with any heavier-armoured warriors. Gideon, don’t worry too much about attacking, just focus on healing and immobilizing any enemies that Stagio doesn’t take down right away.”

“Aw, but I love attacking!” Gideon complained disappointedly.

“Finally,” Fenris’ voice hardened, “if you see any mages, leave them to _me_.”

Their battle plan reminded him of when Hawke had issued them their orders at the Gallows before taking on the templars, all those years ago in Kirkwall. That was yet another gift she had given him. If he knew anything of being a leader, it was because of her.

“Any questions?”

“Nope. Let’s bash some heads!” Reja happily proclaimed.

The group made their way to the location of the warehouse. Fenris knew of an abandoned boarding-house next to it from which they could conveniently observe any surrounding activity and look for the sewer entrance. Coming in and out of the warehouse were several men armed with daggers and wearing leathers. Rogues, as he had suspected. He spotted one or two guard-types by the entrances, wielding heavier weapons and wearing plate armour. Furrowing his brow, he imagined that the warehouse was more heavily guarded than what they could see, however. As if reading his mind, Stagio spoke up.

“It looks like this can’t be everyone. Shall I go for a stroll around the neighbourhood and take a look?”

“I’ll go,” Gideon offered. “I’m more dangerous when unarmed.”

True, thought Fenris. They didn’t want to draw the slavers’ attention by walking around with their weapons on display. “Very well, Gideon, go.”

They observed as he inconspicuously hurried through the length of the alley containing the entrance. Reja stood closest to the window, tapping her foot anxiously.

“The skinny mage is gonna get himself killed,” she muttered, “and then we’ll have no one who can revive him.”

Fenris couldn’t help but smile; despite her hardened exterior, Reja had a protective streak which reflected her fighting style.

Gideon returned shortly, slightly out of breath.

“So the good news is, I found the sewer. The bad news is, I have no idea how many people we’ll have to fight through. I couldn’t get a good view.”

Fenris sighed resignedly. He preferred to go into a fight with more information, but his patience had worn thin, and the time of the meeting was approaching.

“Let’s do this, then,” he said.

The sun was high in the sky as they descended into the sewers of the southern port district, a truly Maker-forsaken place. The noblewoman had not lied: it seemed there really was an entrance to the warehouse underground, and it was unguarded from the outside. Listening first for activity behind the door, Reja bashed it in with her shoulder and gestured for the rest of them to follow. Stagio notched an arrow and covered their flank.

Once inside, a swift arrow to the head of the distracted guard (who had been taking his midday meal) eliminated the chance of anyone else being alerted to their presence. They crept carefully through the basement of the warehouse, looking for a stairway. The squalor was unfathomable; empty cages where people had been held like chattel were filled with waste, and the smell was nearly intolerable. A few decaying corpses lay in some of them. Fenris had seen many horrors in his time in the Imperium, where the slave trade was an accepted part of society, but he supposed a consequence was that the slave trade was relatively clean and palatable, at least on the surface, to the everyday citizen of Tevinter. Here, slavers needed not keep up such socially acceptable appearances.

In the last room, one of the cages had people in it. Emaciated elves, mostly women, barely even looked up when they entered. The woman in the cage sitting closest to the entrance turned to them fearfully. Her eyes widened when she saw Fenris and she scrambled to get up.

“Please, you’re not one of them, you have to help us, _please_,” she pleaded desperately.

Fenris felt righteous rage start to bubble up. He felt his lyrium markings glow faintly and saw Gideon eye him warily. He strode over to the cage and grabbed the lock. It shattered in his hand.

“You will never endure this again,” he spat, probably frightening the poor dozen or so elves that crouched in the cage. He felt waves of healing energy emanating from Gideon as he channeled it to the elves. The prisoners started slowly getting to their feet, with Stagio and Reja helping them out of the cages, while Fenris approached the woman who had first called out to him.

“Why are there so few of you here?” he demanded, and realizing his tone, softened. “My apologies. We expected more people, and more resistance. Do you know where everyone went?”

The woman was shaking as she leaned against the wall. “I-I don’t know, serah, they took them up a week ago and I haven’t seen them since. My son, he was with them, please ser, will you look for them?”

Fenris frowned. “What’s upstairs? Is that where the sales happen?”

“I think so,” she stammered. “I’m sorry, we’ve only been here for two weeks and the guards don’t tell us anything.”

“Alright. The way out into the sewers is clear. Take your people and stay hidden there for now. If there are any more prisoners upstairs, my friends and I will send them your way. Here, take this,” he instructed, reaching into his coin purse. “We will try to meet you in the sewers to help you book safe passage to Ferelden, but if you run into trouble and need to leave, you will have to do it yourselves. Do you understand?”

The woman nodded quickly and took the money. “Thank you, serah,” she whispered, seemingly unable to believe his words, and called out to the rest of the prisoners. Fenris felt their eyes on him as they filtered out of the room. He hoped he could help them once they concluded their mission.

Stagio tapped him on the shoulder. “Shall I take the rear?”

Fenris’ expression darkened, and he made a sound of agreement. “Onwards.”

Having seen the last of the imprisoned elves flee, they pressed on until they rounded a corner and met a stairway, which they slowly ascended. It opened into what appeared to be the foyer for a larger hall. Ducking down before reaching the top of the stairs, Fenris turned to Gideon.

“Cast the quiet thing,” he hissed to the mage, who mouthed “got it” and raised his staff. Once he was finished casting, they leapt into the foyer.

The surprised faces of a dozen confused guards encircled in a shimmering cloud of electricity greeted them.

“What the—” one of them cried out as Stagio’s arrow put an end to his sentence.

“Surprise!” exclaimed Reja and launched herself at them.

It was a close-quarters fight, made even closer by the spell, which paralyzed anyone trying to leave its area of effect. It also happened to dampen any noise trying to escape its grasp, making it a particularly convenient spell for those trying to stay undetected. Fenris charged, snarling, at a group of guards standing bunched together, backs to the wall, bracing their shields forward. He stunned all three with a wide sweep of his blade. _Too easy_, he thought with a smirk, and geared up for another swing. One of them recovered more quickly than the others and struck at him with his axe but he knocked it away easily. With a mighty downwards blow of his sword, the guard’s breastplate was cleaved in two and he fell, hot blood splattering on Fenris’ cheek. He saw a blade whirring in his periphery and dodged it easily, retaliating with a pommel to the face of his opponent. The last of the three guards, frozen by one of Gideon’s spells, shattered satisfyingly under his blade.

Fenris paused to catch his breath. Suddenly, he felt a piercing pain in his lower back, and turned just quickly enough to spot his assailant vanish. _Fucking assassins_. Hawke had never focused on honing her stealth skills, so he had no idea how they worked, but Fenris swore it had to be magic. Thankfully, no one was immune to the blast of energy that he now unleashed, lyrium marks flashing, and the nearby assassin was revealed, falling to the floor. An arrow from Stagio made short work of her, and Fenris shot him a grateful look as he sprinted over to where Reja was taking on five guards simultaneously.

“Come on, dusters, scared to fight a _girl_?” she bellowed, before using her shield to knock one of them unconscious. She cut down one, then two men with a flash of her steel. Fenris swept through two more and Stagio finished off the last one with a sharp twang of his bow.

The ground was now littered with the bodies of the guards they had defeated. Stagio gingerly stepped around them as he eyed the spot where the assassin had wounded Fenris and to which he was now pressing a bloody hand.

“Would you mind if I take a look at it? Antivan poison can be nasty stuff,” the Rivaini inquired, brows furrowed.

“I’m fine,” Fenris growled, wincing. “We should hurry. These bodies are unlikely to go unnoticed for long.”

He saw Stagio and Gideon glance at each other, and then at him.

“Just a little something for the road, Fenris,” Gideon quipped with a wink, and promptly started looting the body at his feet. Stagio shrugged and did the same.

Reja tossed Fenris a bandage. “Here, put it on. Magey, could you do your job and _heal_ the stubborn elf?”

Fenris grimaced as he placed the bandage over the wound and wound it around his torso. A wave of energy washed over his body and he felt it stitch itself together, along with the scratches he had sustained elsewhere. That was an uncomfortable feeling, but he could not deny that the rejuvenation that accompanied the healing felt amazing: somewhere in between waking up well-rested, scrubbing away a Deep Roads expedition’s-worth of filth, and the first sip of warm mead on a cold winter’s day. He reveled in it as he wiped the blood from his face. In the many years since escaping Danarius’ clutches, he had always hated feeling the effects of magical energy on his body, whether coming from enemies or friends. He found it ironic, now, that Gideon’s healing was appreciated, comforting, even.

Coin purses sufficiently padded, Gideon and Stagio were ready to move on, as was the rest of their group. Listening at the door leading to what he assumed was the great hall, Fenris could hear muffled voices. He recognized the shrill tone of the Orlesian woman. He slowly cracked the door open.

“…and I would like new slaves to replace the ones that were worthless once they reached Jader. Really, Benicio, plague? I can’t imagine any of your other buyers were satisfied—”

She stopped as Fenris and his companions burst through the door and strode into the hall. It was about the size of the dining hall in Iva’s inn. He imagined a merchant would store their goods here for the winter, crates of spice bundles and dried fruit stacked on top of each other, smoked meat hanging from the rafters; now, however, it was empty. The Orlesian stood in the middle of the hall, with Leontine at her right side and a complement of guards at her rear. Another pair of guards stood austerely on a landing up the stairs behind them, carefully monitoring the exit. She faced a hooded man flanked by his own guards, all with their backs to them. Fenris also noted a handful of archers leaning casually against the wall on his right, who immediately stood to attention on their entrance.

“Ah, I see my friends have finally made it,” the noblewoman proclaimed. She shot a steely look at Fenris. “I’m afraid we will have to interrupt the negotiations.”

The Crows twisted to face them, and the man Fenris assumed was Benicio, based on the fineness of his leathers, smirked. The multitude of scars on his face and arms spoke of a history of battles. “I see you are capable men, and based on your appearance, I suspect my guards behind the door are dead and that Mademoiselle Thibault intends to use your prowess to take over my business. I am obliged to tell you that whatever deal she’s cut you will be useless without the cargo that _we_ provide. How does a hundred sovereigns sound instead?”

To the Crows and the noblewoman’s people, it must have looked like Fenris was thinking it over, when really he was counting the numbers on each side. His companions stood, silent and tense, behind him, waiting for his response. The Crows had more people, true, but the archers were lightly armoured, and Gideon would be able to dispose of them quickly. That left Benicio and his three warriors to Amelianne’s seven.

“No, that won’t be necessary,” he growled simply, and put a hand on his blade.

“Ah. That is a shame,” sighed Benicio, and drew his daggers.

The archers against the wall let loose a hail of arrows in their direction, which appeared to stop midair as they embedded themselves firmly in Gideon’s hastily-erected barrier. Fenris drew his sword and raced to confront the Crow leader. A fleeting glance in the Orlesian’s direction showed Leontine guarding her mistress, striking at a Crow with her shield while the noble’s other guards parried with additional Crows that had streamed in through a side door. Fenris’ target vanished into darkness before he could reach him; grunting, he decided to assist with the elimination of the archers. His blade sliced through the air and connected with hardened leather as some of the archers leapt away and drew daggers. The air crackled as electrical energy stunned the man closest to him, and Fenris cut him down, but was quickly surrounded. With a roar, Reja launched herself through the circle, shield-first, to his side, and they sliced and bashed their way through the rogues, circling back-to-back, the same way he had fought together with Felissa so many times before. At last, the archers laid dead at their feet. Wiping sweat from his forehead, Fenris glanced at the noblewoman’s side of the hall: her warriors were still dealing with the remaining Crows but Amelianne appeared unscathed. _Good_, he thought, and shot a look at Gideon and Stagio, still standing with their backs to the doorway. Stagio gave a wave before firing off a series of arrows towards where the Orlesians were fighting, in tandem with Gideon’s bolts of electricity. Benicio was nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly, the hall filled with a wall of pungent, dark, opaque gas, reaching from Fenris’ feet to well above his head. He coughed violently; it had to be poison of some kind. He felt a burst of pain as a blade was driven into his shoulder. _There you are_, he thought triumphantly. Snarling, Fenris dropped his sword and felt his lyrium markings light up as his flesh began to _fade_. Not having expected the stroke of the dagger to continue, the assailant stumbled forward. Fenris phased his hand back into a solid state as he grabbed Benicio by the throat.

He then crushed the Crow’s windpipe.

Tossing the body to the side, Fenris roared, “GET RID OF THE GAS, GIDEON!”

“I’m… a little… busy at the moment!” the mage yelled back, his speech punctuated by crashes of magical energy. Fenris saw flashes of lightning and fire emanating from a corner of the hall. Sword raised, he rushed towards it to assist Gideon and nearly ran over Reja in the process. They met eyes, she flashed him a toothy smile, and they rushed towards the source of the magic. Once they got close, a blast of energy nearly knocked them off their feet and sent several Crows flying.

“GIDEON, we’re coming to help, now don’t fucking blast us with anything,” Reja yelled.

However, no thanks to either of them, it seemed that the attack on Gideon had finally ceased, as a gust of blissfully clear air emanated from his direction. The dark smoke disappeared to reveal Gideon panting and clutching his side a few paces from Fenris and Reja. The assassins Gideon had stunned started to recover, but the two warriors methodically cut them down. Glancing at the Orlesian noblewoman, Fenris was pleased to see that she and some of her warriors were tired, but still breathing. The corpses of the Crows littered the ground, and Reja avoided them as she rushed to help Gideon sit down and handed him a vial of lyrium, which he promptly swallowed. The mage’s hands glowed with a soft white light as he began to heal whatever wounds he had sustained.

A whistle came from somewhere above him. Grinning, Stagio dropped down from a rafter and landed gracefully next to him.

“I got some good shots from up there,” he announced with satisfaction. More quietly, he turned to face Fenris with his back to the Orlesians and asked, “What’s the plan now?”

Fenris frowned. “Follow my lead.” He then addressed the noblewoman.

“Lady Thibault, I trust you are unhurt?” he asked, striding towards her group as the woman was speaking sharply to Leontine. She turned at the sound of her name.

“Yes, I am fine. I was beginning to think you had no intention of showing up. I am pleased to be wrong, Fenris.” Amelianne smoothed her hair and inspected a speck of blood on the sleeve of her gown.

“You got location of your cargo from Benicio, then?”

“Yes, they are in a holding cell upstairs. He’s gone and sold off half of the men already,” she complained with a scowl, “and they fetch the best prices in Jader. No matter. They will be on my ship by the morning. Will your group be taking over the warehouse? I cannot deny it is a convenient location, with the sewer exit and all…”

Fenris was stonefaced as he met her gaze, standing an arm’s length away. “Do you regret it, Lady Thibault?” he found himself asking.

“What, Benicio? _Bien_, I suppose the Crows won’t be happy, but they wouldn’t dare post a contract on a _Thibault_.”

He nodded resolutely. The lyrium markings came alive as the flesh of his arm became transluscent. The Orlesian and her pawns watched with fascination and then horror as he plunged it into her chest, firmly grasped her still beating heart, and tore it out.

Fenris hadn’t done that in a long time. Felissa didn’t like it; when it came down to it, Hawke relished killing very little, and despised turning it into spectacle. Yet, now, the hot blood of the slaver bitch streaming down his forearm was _satisfying_, as were the horrified looks of the Orlesian guards. Why should she not feel the pain that she had caused? The pain that _he _had felt, a plaything for his Tevinter master, and now felt, the weight of a thousand unfulfilled futures bearing down on him? The woman’s lifeless form slumped to the ground, and he watched, as if from above, as Leontine unsheathed her blade. He observed himself draw his own and _thump_, her body hit the ground as he tossed her aside after running her through. Another _thump_, and then a clatter, as he cleaved the burly bodyguard’s head clean from his shoulders and the great axe he had been too slow to draw fell to the ground. _Thump_, as an arrow went through the eye of a lightly armoured young man, no older than eighteen, reaching for his own bow. _Thump_, _thump_, _THUMP_.

It was only when he sensed overwhelming fatigue in his muscles that Fenris’ mind lurched back into his body. Like the bodies around him, he lost grip of his blade and fell to the ground. Arms around his knees, the tears came unbidden; he simply wept, salty tears mingling with the metallic tang of the blood on his cheeks, torso heaving, shoulders shaking. He feebly batted away a tentative hand of one of his companions. _Maker_, he thought desperately, _why bring me Hawke, if only to take her away? Would that I could have stayed miserable and lonely in that Hightown mansion forever, it would have been better than to suffer these dreams of a future that would never be…_

If the Maker heard his anguish, He gave no indication. Now, Fenris had become aware of his companions hovering over his shoulder.

“She’s dead,” he choked out, feeling as if this outburst owed some explanation, but not turning to face them. “She’s dead, she’s not coming back, and I am alone.”

He could feel their stunned silence. Finally, Stagio spoke.

“Talia? What happened? But she seemed so strong, so—”

“—invincible?” Reja finished for him. “Yeah. Tough as nails, that one.” She cleared her throat. “I—I’m sorry about earlier, I didn’t know.”

He waved away her apology and started to get up. Gideon gave him a hand, pulling him up off the floor. “Small consolation from a mage, but I’m sorry about Talia. She seemed really special.”

Fenris wiped his cheeks and managed to choke out, “Yes. She was.”

The group stood in uncomfortable silence, staring at him. He picked up his sword from the ground and tore off a piece of the noblewoman’s dress to wipe off the blood. As if snapping out of hypnosis, Gideon shuddered and strapped his staff to his back. “Right, Stagio, you want to see if there’s anything good on these poor sods? Mistress Snooty over here _radiated_ wealth, so I’d check her first. I know you hate doing this, Reja, so anything for you?”

“If you see any amethysts, let me know. I’ll go with Fenris to go take care of the _real reason we’re here_,” she retorted amicably, putting away her shield but keeping her blade bared.

He did the same with his weapon – if any Crows remained, ready for an ambush, he didn’t want to be caught unawares – and gestured towards the stairs leading to the landing. There were two doors on either side, leading to the rooms adjacent. They split up, each exploring either side. Another door, with a heavy bolt laying next to it, greeted him. He cautiously listened for movement on the other side. Nothing yet, but the damn assassins knew how to be quiet. Carefully, he eased the door open and slid into the room. It was dusky and smelt of damp and terror. Five or six cages stood side by side, so close that prisoners could reach out and touch one another or pass things between them.

Close together, and… empty?

Puzzled, Fenris crept forwards. The Crows, had they cheated the Orlesian once again and sold the slaves already? She had told him she was there to buy; perhaps the Crows _had_ intended to cut her out of the business today. He then noticed something glowing faintly in the last cage. Approaching slowly, he got close enough to make out what it was. An assassin, dressed in the same leathers as the ones they had just killed, appeared to be frozen in place inside of some kind of magical barrier, not unlike the ones the mages he knew would cast, but instead of forming a sphere, it formed a sort of column of green light. Strangely, the man’s flesh appeared translucent, much like Fenris did when phasing. He had never seen this spell before and shuddered to think of the sheer power of the mage that was sustaining it for so long and from so far away, assuming they weren’t still in the building.

Keeping his eyes on the enchanted assassin, Fenris backed away to the doorway. He called out to his companions. “I’ve found something!”

A few moments later, Reja appeared, a satchel she hadn’t been wearing before hanging from her shoulder heavily.

“Me too! I don’t like looting corpses, but _chests_, I can handle…”

“Look.”

She did. Gideon and Stagio entered the room soon after. Immediately, Gideon groaned and leaned on the door frame.

“What the hell is this? I can practically see the Fade leaking in here.”

Now that he had mentioned it, Fenris could feel something. It was as if all the tiny hairs on his body were standing up. His markings glowed faintly.

Stagio hummed. “Where are the slaves?”

“With whoever did this, I assume,” Fenris muttered, scowling.

Sighing worriedly, Gideon pointed his staff at the frozen assassin and attempted to cast a barrier. Fenris could see that it didn’t take, and the blue sphere flickered away after a few seconds. “I’ve never seen magic like this before, not in the Circle, not anywhere else,” the mage stated, running his fingers through his hair.

“Neither have I,” Fenris said, “and I’ve met my fair share of Tevinter magisters. This is no Tevinter mage’s doing.”

“Sounds like our cue to get out of here, then. I’m a dwarf, I don’t mess with this creepy magic shit,” Reja grumbled.

“You don’t have to tell me twice. Let’s go,” said Gideon, eyebrows knitted together.

“There are still the elves from downstairs that we can help, Fenris,” Stagio said softly. “Whatever happened to these people, it seems they were being helped.”

However, once they had gathered their loot and gotten back into the sewer, the group they had released from the cage in the basement was nowhere to be found. Sharp-eyed Stagio spotted a crumpled piece of paper stuffed inside a hole in the sewer wall.

_We are safe now_, it read, in messy script. _Thank you_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I am extremely open to suggestions as I haven't written anything of note in forever, so please let me know if there's any improvements I should make for the next chapter.


	3. The Ship

**Summary: Fenris flees Estwatch, with the help of an old friend. He lands in an unfamiliar place. NSFW warning for a short scene in this chapter.**

* * *

It was nightfall by the time that Fenris returned to his room in the inn. It wouldn’t be long, now – he had been rash in his decision to slaughter the Orlesian and her guard. No doubt their group had been spotted by a Crow guard, too, while they were leaving – Fenris wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. Someone would be coming for him. For his companions, too, but he couldn’t worry about them now.

Still, as he hastily threw some clothing and potions into his knapsack, he couldn’t help but wonder as to the fate of the slaves they had tried to free. At first, he had thought that a rival slaver group, perhaps Tevinter in origin, had stolen the slaves where they had found the immobilized Crow; however, the note they had found by the sewer entrance seemed to indicate otherwise. True, it could have been written under duress, but why bother write anything at all if it was insincere? Furthermore, who or what would inspire such immediate trust from the elves such that they would truly believe themselves safe?

He ran his hand through his hair. There was likely precious little time left. He had to move.

His fingers lingered on a white tunic that had belonged to Hawke. He carefully folded it and laid it gently in the knapsack. She had lain in it often, reading a book or writing in her journal, in her own bed at the Amell estate, or in his, or in this one. He wished bitterly that he had her journal – it had accompanied her to Skyhold and doubtlessly perished with her in the Fade. Perhaps he would write back to Varric and ask about it. What he did have, were Felissa’s letters, exactly two, one of which she had sent from Amaranthine after her ship docked, and the other she had penned in her room in Skyhold. The pages were supple and weathered from repeated readings. These, too, he folded gingerly and placed in the bag, along with a map from the desk and some notes he had taken during his time there.

Glancing around the room to make sure he hadn’t missed anything essential, Fenris closed his pack and slung it over his shoulder. Strapping his sword to his back, he wedged open his window and, Hawke’s ring on his finger and her dagger at his hip, jumped down into the alley below. He had paid Iva in advance in anticipation of such a situation. He would miss her cooking.

His destination was the western docks. With enough coin, one could purchase passage to any major port city on the Waking Sea; he would see what ship was leaving the soonest and go wherever it took him. He followed the narrow alley, lined with little balconies and sparsely lit with glowing lanterns, until he emerged onto a main road. Crossing it quickly, with several furtive glances behind him, he continued into another alley, this one with no lighting at all. Buildings, bleached white where the moonlight hit them, fell ominously into complete darkness, where the moon was blocked. It was into these shadows that Fenris now melted, hastening his pace.

It was an unusually quiet and warm night for Little Llomerryn. At this time, sailors and raiders would usually be swaggering down the alleys Fenris walked hurriedly through, heavy with food and drink, laughing heartily or arguing amongst themselves. Tonight, though, there was little sound, except for the occasional ruffling of seagull wings, the closing of a window. Even the sea wind, usually vicious in the port city, had calmed somewhat. Fenris would have welcomed the opportunity to hear the approach of a pursuer, if not for the fact that he had never been much for sneaking around himself, and the noise from his armour alone disturbed the stillness significantly. Still, he crept along, taking care not to scrape his sword against the stuccoed walls of the alley.

Some time later, he became aware of evenly spaced footsteps somewhere behind him. A calculatedly casual glance behind him yielded nothing but a short pause in the person’s pace; he did not see or hear anything else. They were either following him to see his destination, or being careful before attacking, he deduced. In either event, he wouldn’t make it easy for them.

Turning a corner, he suddenly broke into a full-on sprint until he heard steps behind him in the street. He stopped abruptly and turned around, catching a glimpse of a hooded figure in the distance as they grabbed a supporting beam on the underside of a balcony and jumped up to the railing. His pursuer then climbed up onto the roof, seemingly effortlessly, and paused to stare at him, as if daring him to follow them.

“Shit,” he cursed. An enemy on higher ground, especially one he couldn’t see, was just that much deadlier. He hadn’t seen a bow, but a well-aimed shot from above could cause serious damage.

Continuing, still on the ground for now, in the direction of the western docks, he felt the sweat beading on his forehead, stinging his eyes. He could hear nothing of his pursuer, now. The alleyway he rushed through was now periodically lit with braziers, which cast warm light that blended with the cool glare of the moon. Fenris’ quick steps scared away a cat previously asleep in a doorway – he was nearing the docks, a better trafficked area.

Suddenly, he felt the breeze of an arrow whistle past his left ear. Still running, Fenris whipped his head to look back, and saw the hooded figure running on the roof alongside him. It was a young elf woman, he realized, and her bow looked Dalish in make. So, the Crows were hiring Dalish now? How strange…

She was gaining on him, more fleetfooted in her cloak than he in his plate armour. Cursing his luck, Fenris saw no alternative than to ram his shoulder directly into the next doorway he saw. This earned him a terrified shriek from the home’s occupant, a rather pretty young woman whose holey tunic and needle and thread dropped from her hands as soon as he barreled through.

“Sorry,” he said, “You have an upstairs?”

Wide-eyed, she nodded. “P-please, don’t hurt us.”

Fenris instructed hurriedly, “Lock the door and stay here,” as he ran up the stairs to the second floor, past two bedrooms, and out onto a balcony. He glanced back in time to witness an angry, scarred older man in a billowy linen nightgown yelling at him in Rivaini; he couldn’t help but laugh as he jumped to the next door balcony and climbed to the roof. Even raiders had to settle down eventually, apparently.

Another arrow whipped past him once he was on the shingled roof. She was notching another arrow on the roof across the alley from him as he broke away, running as fast as he possibly could. The assault of arrows was relentless now, and she was a good shot, barely missing at times, but he had avoided his fair share of arrows (and magic surges, and Bianca’s bolts when Varric’s aim went awry). The arrows stopped coming after he got sufficiently far away._ Almost there_, he thought.

The roof he was on ended at another large street. Hopping down onto a low shed, and then to street level, Fenris glanced behind him as he ran across the street and towards the docks. No sign of the hooded elf. An unfriendly-looking group of hardened raiders sat on a few crates at the entrance to the docks, taking turns to take swigs of a darkly-coloured liquid from a glass bottle. One of them put their hand on her sword as he strode up to them.

“You looking for trouble, elf?” she growled, narrowing her eyes at him and spitting on the ground.

He gestured to the coin pouch on his hip. “There’s a sovereign here for you if you can tell me which ship leaves Estwatch next.”

She scoffed. “And what’s stopping us from slitting your throat and taking all of your little sovereigns?”

“I think you’d find that rather difficult,” he said, raising a brow and reaching for the hilt of his sword. He doubted they had ever seen an elf with a blade as large.

“Relax, Quinta,” muttered one of the other raiders, bottle in hand. Fenris took his hand off his blade. “It’s the Siren’s Revenge, moored at the end over there.” He waved his hand into the darkness. “You’d be better off waiting for the next one, though, the Siren’s captain isn’t likely to take passengers.”

With a hint of a smile, Fenris reached into his pouch and threw the man a sovereign in one fluid motion. “I think she might make an exception this time.” It seemed his luck wasn’t so bad, after all.

The raider caught it and Fenris walked past them towards the last dock. A guard glowered at him as he approached the ship but he simply said, “Tell her it’s Fenris,” and strode onto the walkway to board the ship. The guard scurried past him to the captain’s quarters on the main deck of the ship and Fenris followed closely enough to see him knock timidly on the door, which burst open after a few moments to reveal a slightly more scantily-clad than usual Isabela. She had started to ream out the poor guard for interrupting when she noticed Fenris standing behind him.

“Oh my, what have we here? Really, Fenris, we’re in the same city for _months_ and you never come to call on little old me? I swear, I go out of my way to get you in Estwatch and never hear from you again.” He barely believed it, but she almost sounded hurt.

“Missed me?”

Isabela scowled. “In all my travels, I’ve never met anyone who broods _quite_ as effectively as you.” To his surprise, she strode up and embraced him. “So, yes. Come on, let’s catch up. I’m sure I can dig up an old bottle of Tevinter red for you in here somewhere,” she said, waving at her door.

He followed her into the well-lit quarters. The sight of a luxurious, somewhat in disarray bed greeted him, along with a good-looking blonde woman sitting on it, wearing even less clothing than Isabela. He raised his brow at the latter, who laughed. “Oh, that’s Merlinda,” Isabela said, and spotting from Merlinda what Fenris imagined was a jealous look, called out to her. “Don’t worry, love, he’s not here for _that_. An old friend, from Kirkwall. Speaking of which, why _did _you decide to drop by, and in the middle of the night, no less?”

Fenris settled into one of two armchairs in a corner. Isabela dug around in a chest by the bed, pausing to give Merlinda a squeeze. She found what she was looking for: a dusty bottle and a glass. Setting them on a table between the armchairs, she opened the bottle and poured some wine into the glass. Fenris took a sip from the glass as she sat down and brought the bottle directly to her lips, taking a large swig.

“I need to get out of Estwatch. My business is concluded, but not everyone involved is particularly happy about it.”

She nodded understandingly. “What about Hawke? Is she staying in Little Llomerryn, then?”

His heart dropped. “She’s… not here.”

Oblivious to his grief, Isabela chuckled and took another mouthful of the wine. “Yes, I can see that, you mean not in Estwatch? Where did she go? I ought to give her a real tongue-lashing for never coming to see me while she was here, though she might enjoy that a bit too much, if you know what I mean…”

Fenris turned away, covering his face with his hands. “She’s not anywhere, Isabela. She’s gone. Died helping the Inquisitor.”

Isabela said nothing at first. He glanced back at her and saw that the colour had drained from her cheeks, her usually tanned face turning sallow. Shaking, she poured the rest of the bottle into his glass.

“We’re going to need more wine,” she said quietly, and went into a side room. Merlinda had fled, apparently; where to, he could not tell. Fenris was left alone, playing with Felissa’s ring on his finger, thinking about her, her toothy grin, her contagious laugh, her unruly hair splayed on his bare chest, tickling his nose. The sound of Isabela setting down a new flagon startled him out of his reverie. He looked up to see a candle, and a curious miniature of a ship, contained entirely within a bottle, on the table, as well as an additional glass. Reaching into her pocket for some matches, Isabela lit the candle and sat down, staring intently at the flame.

“In Rivain,” she began, “when a person dies, we light a candle and stay awake by their side until they’re burned.” She paused, lost in thought. “I lose a man out at sea, we don’t burn the body. Ships being made of wood and all that. But the crew stays with the body until morning. We tell stories. A vigil, so to speak.”

Fenris drained his glass. Isabela sighed.

“What happened, Fenris? I can’t believe it, she always seemed so—”

“—invincible, yes,” he finished for her, and told her what Varric had written. A heroic death, if horrific, at the hands of a Fade demon. If any comfort could be gleaned from the manner of Hawke’s passing, Isabela was certainly not the one to do it, if her dismayed face was any indication.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, both watching the wax of the candle drip down the sides.

“Maker, she was funny, though,” Isabela remarked suddenly, not looking at him. “Lethal with those daggers, too. I bet my whole damn ship that she tore whatever horrible thing killed her a new one, in more ways than one.”

“Indeed,” he agreed, half smiling. “Probably complained the whole time about how ugly Fade demons are.”

Isabela laughed. “Or about how she always has to do all the work. You know, one time, we were having a drink at the Hanged Man, and some drunken lout took it upon himself to cop a feel. She had him in tears in minutes. Something about him looking like he’d never touched a woman in his life…”

“Better than what I would have done,” muttered Fenris sourly.

“Lucky for him, you were off skulking somewhere, and he lived to tell the tale. Though I doubt he likes to,” she grinned.

They finished their drinks. Isabela played idly with the boat in a bottle.

“She taught me how to read,” Fenris said quietly. “She found me a story about Shartan, she thought I’d like it. Instead, I got angry. There were many times that I was… less than worthy. And yet, Felissa was always patient.”

“She thought highly of you,” Isabela suggested, cupping her chin in her hand.

Fenris sighed. “Yes. It made me want to prove her right.”

“You know,” she said, laying the enchanted ship back on the table, “she gave me this. Soon after we met. No one had ever given me anything just because, not without expecting something in return, not really. But Hawke was just like that. In a world full of smart-mouthed assholes, she was the only one that was kind, too.”

“I didn’t know that,” Fenris murmured, laying a hand on the cool glass. He wished desperately for their little room in Iva’s inn, or for Hawke’s quarters in the Amell mansion, or for his four-poster bed in Danarius’ mansion.

They spent the rest of the evening in a similar fashion, telling stories about Felissa, reminiscing about their time in Kirkwall, catching up. He told her about the operation he had shut down. Together, they puzzled over who might have liberated the elves while Fenris and his friends had been busy entertaining the Orlesian and the Crows.

“There’s no way it was just one of the Crows? You know,” Isabela mentioned, “I didn’t think I was going to let those slaves go until I did. Maybe someone had a change of heart.”

“If there’s a mage among the Crows powerful enough to send a man to the Fade, the nations of Thedas should tremble,” Fenris countered. “I don’t know.”

“I hope they’re alright,” offered Isabela, to a smile from Fenris.

“Me, too.”

She agreed to take him with her to Cumberland, which was where her ship was heading off to in the morning. Drinking with Isabela felt as if he were stealing a tiny moment back from the past. Every once in awhile, he could imagine that Hawke was just around the corner looking for a bottle of her favourite honey mead, that the next morning they would all be going off to Sundermount to rescue the daughter of some noble or other, and that Varric was just in the next room telling anyone who would listen that Hawke had fought seven dragons simultaneously and won. Fenris had forgotten how good it felt to be with someone who had known him for a long time. Still, the rocking of the ship served as a reminder that everything had changed.

Eventually, they were drunk. Less so than a few nights ago, for Fenris at least, but his vision was swimming and he doubted he would be able to get up without stumbling. His armour had come off at some point, and he found himself staring idly at Isabela’s exposed, silky thigh while she rambled about some member of her crew, thinking about how nice it would be to be touched. Before Hawke, the slightest touch would have evoked immense agony, but she had showed him how comforting it could be to be held, among other things. Isabela must have read his mind, because suddenly she was sitting squarely on his lap, and his hands on her waist and tearing desperately at her clothing. He stood up, and they nearly fell down as the alcohol buckled both their knees. Nevertheless, Fenris managed to trip his way over to the bed, and Isabela, hanging on to his arm as if for dear life, followed suit. He pushed her onto the covers, still messy from her goings-on with Merlinda; now, Isabela was removing his tunic – he caught a surprised look of delight as she spied the intricate lyrium markings on his flesh. Ignoring her fascination, Fenris roughly flipped her around and pulled down the waist of his trousers. And then he was inside of her.

It felt _nothing_ like what it had been like with Felissa. There was no pain, but he realized that he was watching himself, as if from above, and he cringed at the sight and closed his eyes; perhaps that would help. All that came into his mind’s eye, however, were images of Felissa: laughing, arguing, reading… holding a baby on her hip… He tried to think of making love to her, what it had felt like, but it was too painful, too far removed from what was happening now. Soon, he stopped entirely, pushed Isabela away, and hiked back up his trousers, rolling over to turn his back to Isabela.

“I—I can’t,” he stammered, unable to face her. “I’m sorry.”

Isabela, the mistress of innuendos, of dirty jokes, and, at times it had seemed, of sex itself, for once said nothing about what they had done. He felt the bed shift as she got up quietly, receding, erratic footsteps followed by the opening and closing of the door.

Fenris felt as if a chasm was opening in the pit of his stomach, threatening to pull his entire body through. Vision still blurry, he noticed a mirror hanging across from where he lay on his side: knees to his chest, his entire body was shaking, and the shadows under his eyes suggested he hadn’t slept in weeks. The shame he felt was all-encompassing: he had betrayed Felissa, and for what? Any pleasure he might have felt had been marred by the knowledge that the woman he truly craved was gone forever.

The door to Isabela’s room creaked open, and she crept inside. Fenris sat up reluctantly but didn’t look at her.

“I’m afraid I don’t have any guest rooms on my ship but there’s bunk for you in the hold. Don’t worry,” she said quietly, “my men won’t bother you.”

Fenris finally met her gaze. She had a pitying look on her face and was watching him carefully.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, and got up, accepting her implicit invitation to leave. As he passed her, she put a hand gingerly on his shoulder; he flinched from her touch and she withdrew it.

“It’s alright. We’ll talk in the morning,” she said reassuringly, and closed the door behind him.

He slunk down into the hold to find rows of bunk beds, and a dozen or two sailors in various states of slumbering, playing cards, and drinking. One of the sailors, a hulking Qunari with a large scar in his chest that looked as if someone had attacked him with a cleaver, gestured towards what Fenris assumed was to be his bunk. He clambered onto it and cursed himself for having left his belongings, including the pack that had miraculously survived the chase earlier, in Isabela’s quarters, though they were likely safer there. The hollow feeling in his chest expanding, he soon fell into a fitful sleep.

* * *

Fenris was startled awake at what seemed like the crack of dawn, judging from his exhaustion, by the Qunari sailor shaking his shoulder, not unkindly, and telling him that he was wanted in the captain’s quarters. Sitting up, he groaned at the headache that pounded behind his eyes, although at this point, he supposed he should get used to it. He had dreamed of Felissa again, though not as vividly as before: this time, he had been a wolfling, racing through the Seheron jungle, with someone, or some_thing_, on his tail. He heard howls in the distance – friendly or not, he could not tell. Suddenly, the jungle had been swallowed up by a darkness that filled him with dread, and a massive abomination rose out of it, covered in swathes of ropy mucus, roaring in his face. Just when the monster was about to take him, Felissa appeared, brandishing her daggers, and leapt, screaming, directly into the creature’s mouth. Fenris had awoken in a cold sweat and wasn’t able to fall back asleep for some time, listening to the snores of the sailors around him.

Now, he was back in the armchair where he had gotten so intoxicated the night before, watching Isabela go over some ledgers. At his appearance at her door, she had greeted him relatively warmly before offering him a drink, which he quickly declined.

Still poring over the papers, Isabela announced, “I’ve got business in Cumberland for a few weeks. It’s a few day’s sail if the weather holds up. I don’t know what you plan to do once we get there, but my crew could always use someone of your particular talents. Think about it.”

Fenris cleared his throat awkwardly and ventured, “About last night—”

Isabela surprised him with a cynical laugh. “You think I’ve never tried to get over a dead lover by rutting with someone else before? Fenris, my dear, though this is certainly not the way I would have liked to find out what colour your underthings are, don’t think I don’t know about the dangerous combination of grief and wine. Besides,” she added somberly, “we weren’t exactly thinking straight.”

No, they had not been. Though the hollow feeling in his chest remained, Isabela’s words comforted Fenris somewhat. With a candour that surprised even himself, he said quietly, “I feel as if I have betrayed her.”

For the first time since he came in, Isabela paused her skimming and looked at him with a critical eye, hand on her hip.

“Perhaps we both did. If it makes you feel any better, it would have never happened if Felissa were alive, and since she isn’t, well, no harm done, right?”

Deeply unsatisfied by her answer, he left her chambers and spent the voyage to Cumberland keeping out of the way of the pirates and their duties, sulking in various abandoned corners of the vessel. At some point, he caught the sailors playing a game of diamondback, idly reminiscing about playing the game with Donnic in the Hightown mansion. True to her word, Isabela’s men didn’t bother him, or even seem to notice him lurking around, although he did get a few stares from some of the younger ones. He even stood at the bow, watching as the mighty vessel cut through the waves of the azure Waking Sea, saltwater spraying his face. All of Fenris’ previous experiences at sea had been harrowing tests of loyalty and usefulness for Danarius. Now, in the moments where he wasn’t haunted by thoughts of Hawke, he found himself reluctantly enjoying doing nothing, if only for a few days.

He didn’t see Isabela much for the duration of the trip, which he was grateful for. He was having difficulty mulling over his jumbled thoughts about the night of their reunion. She was right, in a way: they were old friends who had at one point or another been attracted to each other, reunited after many years apart, mourning the death of a lover and friend… it had been likely, at the very least. Most importantly, it didn’t really matter, because though he didn’t know what he would do once in Nevarra, he had no intention of staying with Isabela and her crew. She reminded him too much of a past that was now painful.

The nights, he mostly spent lying awake, staring at the planks above him. He actively dreaded falling asleep, now too guilt-ridden to crave Hawke’s appearances, and so would spend time above deck, re-reading her letters in the moonlight. Still, when he did sleep, she was always there in his dreams, either somewhere far away across the Fade, where he couldn’t reach her, or appearing to save him from something at the last moment, when he thought all was lost.

On the morning of the fifth day, he arose later than usual, and venturing out onto the deck, observed with pleasure that they were approaching a city. The great golden domes of the enormous Cumberland shimmered in the distance, the largest being the College of Enchanters. He could see it even from the water, the white marble of the palace seeming to glow in the morning sun. Guarding the entrance to the port was a bronze statue, taller than the main mast of the _Siren’s _Revenge, of some Nevarran lord or other, his hand outstretched as if to stop unwelcome visitors. Docked at the port were more ships than Fenris had ever seen in Minrathous, with still more anchored in the waters outside. Obviously, the success of Nevarra’s major port in trading with the rest of southern Thedas was not to be understated.

Fenris remained on the deck until they made port somewhere in the vast maze of docks. After running into the hold to assemble his belongings, he stepped off the ship, armed, armoured, and with his pack o his shoulder, and was accosted by the utter chaos. Lines of sailors were unloading cargo from ships, smells emanated from food vendors selling their wares right on the docks, a flurry of languages were being shouted: common, Orlesian, Rivaini, Fenris even caught an earful of Qunlat. He stood, back to the bridge off the ship, and took it all in. Yes, it had been a long time since he had been in a city like this, a _proper_ city.

A brisk tap on his armoured shoulder roused him from his trance. It was Isabela. He turned to her.

“So, this is it, then, old friend?” she casually began.

“So it would seem, yes,” he replied sardonically.

She smiled. “Listen, Fenris, if you ever want to… write me, or anything, you can send it to the Blooming Rose in Kirkwall. I check back there fairly often when I’m in town.”

He snorted. “I imagine you wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

A wicked gleam in her eye, she winked. “Imagine all you like, my dear.”

His facial expression fell, and she quickly added, “I jest, Fenris. Just... don’t let the next thing I hear about you be a letter from Varric, alright?”

Fenris squirmed uncomfortably. He wasn’t sure he would be able to pick up a quill and write anyone, let alone Isabela, after what had happened between them. Still, he nodded. “Thank you for everything, Isabela.”

“Take care of yourself, Fenris.”

He smiled. Felissa would have told him the same. “I will,” Fenris said quietly, and walked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I've had a hard time getting through this chapter as it was difficult to navigate Fenris' emotions (not sure he even knows how, to be honest). I'm excited to explore Cumberland with him, though, and since this is post Mage-Templar war, maybe we'll get to see some sympathetic mages at the College... 
> 
> Hoping for a shorter interval between chapters for Chapter 4!


	4. Cumberland

**Fenris discovers the wonders of Cumberland. He makes some new dwarven friends.**

* * *

Fenris had always secretly liked exploring unfamiliar places, following streets and alleyways that were new to him but old to time. If not for Danarius’ pursuit in Kirkwall, he would have spent his first few weeks there wandering and getting a feel for the city. In their travels, before starting to hunt down any slavers, he and Hawke had spent many a starry night eagerly discovering whatever corner of Thedas they had landed in, bottle of mead in hand. He had often had to pull her away from her favourite pastime, which was peering through the windows of local houses to observe the lives of the people in them. Now, he walked through the crowd of mostly human sailors, merchants, and citizens off the main dock and towards the great stone archway that was the port entrance to Cumberland. The docks and gate area were lined with booths of street vendors peddling wares and food alike, and he imagined that Felissa would have excitedly dashed up to buy the Antivan spiced corn one merchant was advertising and proceeded to eavesdrop on a nearby Orlesian couple’s argument, cob in hand. But she was gone, and he was now alone in a new city once again.

Cumberland was impressive to Fenris, even having lived in Minrathous, the largest city in Thedas. The throngs were comparable in size, and though he imagined the war had shrunk the mage presence significantly, the presence of a few vendors selling various magical implements suggested that not all Cumberland mages had fled or followed the Inquisition. Repositioning his bag on his shoulder, he lowered the hood of his cloak, despite the coastal summer heat, to hide the markings on his face; he could do without even just curious stares, let alone suspicious ones. This was a new city, and he never knew who could be looking for a lanky, heavily-armoured elf with strange tattoos. He walked sluggishly behind a crowd of sailors as he passed the pair of guards inspecting all newcomers to the city. The one closest to him peered distrustfully at the sailors and waved their leader over to his station, but to his own surprise, Fenris was able to slip by without being questioned.

Beyond the archway, the street opened into a large square, an ornate fountain marking its centre. The fountain’s bronze sculpture depicted a snarling high dragon being slain valiantly by some member of the Pentaghast family, Fenris guessed. A few lavishly-dressed human women and children sat on the edges of the stone base of the fountain, chattering and enjoying the spray of the water in the morning sun.

The square was lined all around with buildings several stories high, much like the narrow alleys of Little Llomerryn, but unlike the raider city, the polished white stone of the ornate facades showed Cumberland’s wealth. Each building had neat rows of similarly-styled balconies, some made from curved wrought-iron crafted in intricate designs, others of elegantly-carved different coloured stone. Bright flowers grew in pots hung from handsome wooden windows. Most impressively, just below the roof, each building sported a beautifully-emblazoned Nevarran family name, probably of the noble house that had built it: Van Keren, Radak, Van Graf, and many more. The names were either carved into the stone or laid in marble, silver, and gold. Cumberland had no shortage of wealth, it seemed.

The first floor of one such building in the corner of the square (property of the Mlaker family) housed a tavern, marked by a hanging sign identifying it as such. Though the splendour of the square suggested that Fenris severely lacked the coin to rent a room there, it was as good a place as any to get his bearings.

As soon as he stepped into the tavern, Fenris was greeted by the sight of a lavishly decorated great hall, furs draped over plush leather divans and busts of animals adorning the walls. He got a few glances from the noble occupants as he strode up to the counter, but unlike the common people in the taverns of Little Llomerryn and Kirkwall, nobles knew how to be discreet. Regardless, he pulled his hood lower, and approached the barkeep meticulously polishing the rich mahogany wood of the counter. The human, dark-haired and rather handsome, looked up skeptically as Fenris approached.

“Serah, I’m afraid we do not permit solicitation of mercenary work in the Hunter’s Rest,” he stated quietly, with a critical eye. “Otherwise, our rooms are booked solid for the next few weeks, unfortunately.”

Fenris doubted this, but that was not why he was here. He forced a smile.

“I doubt I’d be able to afford one, anyway. I’ve just come in from Kirkwall and I’m in need of some information, no more,” he explained, amicably. “Where do workers stay in the city?”

The barkeep relaxed and cracked a smile of his own. “You’ll want the west district, across the Cumber. You’ll find some more reasonably priced inns in the Merchant’s Quarter. North of that is the Old Yard, where the warehouses and blacksmiths are, some good boarding-houses there, too.”

“Thank you,” Fenris said, and added, “Does Cumberland have an alienage?”

The barkeep scowled. “Yes, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of it. Northwest tip of the city, you’ll see the damn tree. Nothing good ever happens there.”

Fenris thanked the man again and went on his way, not before sliding a silver coin on the counter. He remembered when he had held a similar view of the elven alienages of the south, thinking the elves within them lazy and entitled, ignorant of true suffering. Through listening to Hawke’s compassionate responses to Merrill’s concern for the Kirkwall alienage, and subsequent conversations with Hawke, he had changed his mind, realizing now that confinement with a miniscule chance of elevating one’s lot in life was often just as bad a fate for an elf as being a slave in Tevinter. Even now, Fenris couldn’t guess what would have become of him had he been born in an alienage, rather than in whatever dire circumstances had driven him to, if Varania had told the truth, volunteer to become a slave.

As the barkeep had suggested, upon exiting the tavern, Fenris went west. He wandered through cobblestone streets lined similarly with the elaborate houses of the Cumberland elite, and then through several blocks of hewn stone houses resembling those of the dwarves, until the street he was following joined a great avenue running along the river Cumber. The sight was truly splendid: the same nobly named houses he had seen in the square by the port now lined both sides of the river, painted in different colours with a variety of elegant facades. The avenue that stretched the length of the river was, as the port docks, lined with vendors selling their wares, though some were beginning to pack up as the workday (or their merchandise) reached its end. A few street-level taverns even had some tables and chairs set outside of their doors, encouraging their clientele to enjoy the sights of the river and the warm Nevarran air. Of all the sights along the Cumber, though, the bridge was the most impressive: Fenris couldn’t imagine the effort it had required to transport the huge sandstone blocks from which the bridge was constructed. Enormous bronze statues, depicting what Fenris supposed were Nevarran monarchs or high-ranking nobles, stood in pairs lining either side of the bridge, gleaming in the golden afternoon sunshine.

Fenris crossed the river, noticing a few furtive glances from a pair of Dalish elves walking in the direction opposite to him. No doubt they recognized that the markings on his chin were not Dalish in origin. He looked back after they passed, noticing one leaning in to whisper something to the other. His pace quickened as he entered the Merchant’s Quarter. It was much less opulent than the square he had seen before, and much more reminiscent of Kirkwall. He followed a large road that eventually became the apparent central square of the quarter, containing a large leather market selling armour, saddles, bags, and even clothing. The customers were haggling ferociously with the merchants at their stalls, waving merchandise in their faces and complaining about the quality. Fenris smiled to himself as he walked past, aiming to read the prices posted in the window of an inn. Disheartened, he shook his head and walked away. Though it seemed cheaper than the Hunter’s Rest, he still wanted to stretch his coin as far as it could go, at least until he could find some work in the city. Perhaps the Old Yard would be more reasonable.

He left the square and headed north on a major street, passing by a general goods store and a fletcher. The buildings in this area were more infrequently emblazoned with noble family names and elaborate facades were few and far in between. Fenris noticed that the populace was becoming more elven, too, as he passed a sign that pointed the way to the Old Yard District. Beside it was a notice board, sheets of paper in various stages of yellowing pinned up. A few of the notices mentioned lost items, still others advertised stores. One in particular caught his eye: “Anuriel’s Bunkhouse, 10 silvers a night, elves welcome”. Wistfully, he thanked Felissa internally, seemingly for the millionth time, for teaching him to read, and tore off the paper, crumpling it into his coin purse.

By now, the sun had left the sky, and night was approaching. The advertisement contained an address, but after looking around, Fenris couldn’t find any signs with street names. Continuing his route north, he started keeping an eye out for a relatively friendly face that could potentially give him directions. Eventually, a younger elven man dressed in worn worker’s clothes approached wearily from the opposite direction of Fenris’ travel; the latter gave him a wave and called out a greeting.

The elf eyed him suspiciously but stopped, his left hand straying towards a small dirk hanging from his belt. Fenris strode up slowly, leaving his hands at his side in a neutral position.

“I’m just looking for directions—” he started.

“Oh, Andraste’s knickers, you’re an elf,” the man remarked with relief, in an accent that reminded him of Merrill’s, and removed his hand from the dagger and visibly relaxing. “My apologies, brother, but you’re tall for an elf and I can’t be too careful with heavily-armoured men wandering around the Yard at night.”

Fenris pulled out the paper from his pouch as the other elf stared at him expectantly. “I’m looking for this place, Anuriel’s Bunkhouse.”

The elf scoffed. “Old Anuriel’s still trying to charge out the arse for his shite rooms, is he? Listen, I’m a married fool now, but I used to stay at Miva’s Room and Board by the market. She charges same as Anuriel, but you’ll be much better taken care of.”

Taken aback by the stranger’s unexpected friendliness, Fenris smiled slightly. “Thank you,” he said gratefully, putting the notice back in his pouch.

“No problem at all.” He started to walk away, but then turned back. “You know what, I’ll lead you there. It’s on my way home, and I can tell you’re new to the city.”

Fenris considered for a moment. It seemed odd for a stranger to be so kind, but he had no reason to distrust him. After all, Hawke had first helped him when they had been perfect strangers.

He followed the man through the twists and turns of dimly lit streets forced to conform around giant stone warehouses. Eventually, they passed a square in which now-vacant stands for merchants stood. The streets adjacent to the square were now filled with people’s homes, with none of the splendour of the noble district or the Merchant’s Quarter in sight. Wooden buildings were stacked several stories high, with lights in many of the windows that had neither panes nor curtains. Somewhere faraway, people were singing, and yet others were arguing.

Miva’s Room and Board was similarly humble, occupying the first two floors of a wooden house. The elf gestured to the sign and stated, “That’s it. Best hospitality this side of the Yard. And,” he added, clapping his hand on Fenris’ shoulder, “intimidating look aside, you seem like an alright fellow, so tell her Yevin sent you. What’s your name, by the way?”

“It’s Fenris.”

Yevin grinned. “Well, then, welcome, Fenris. I think you’ll find you’re not the only Tevinter elf in Cumberland.” With a wave, he was off, following the street they were on until he turned a corner and disappeared.

It wasn’t often that people recognized his name as Tevene in origin, Fenris contemplated as he opened the door to the bunkhouse and entered. _I _am_ the closest I’ve been to Tevinter in years, though_. It struck him, too, that he had given Yevin his real name, in a rare display of trust. He and Felissa had mostly assumed aliases when traveling.

“Greetings, stranger,” a friendly feminine voice called out to him, “looking for a place to rest?”

A petite, redheaded young elven woman stood behind a counter on the right side of a multipurpose room that seemed to serve as a mess hall, kitchen, alehouse, and general store, all in one. It was sparsely decorated but very functional: a fire burned in a hearth to the left, beside a large barrel of ale or wine standing on a table in the corner. Behind the counter was a door with a heavy lock on it, likely a storeroom or place to store valuables. The room had two tables: one, knee-high and surrounded by three worn-out armchairs, was unoccupied. The other was across from the counter, at which three male elves had paused their card game to stare at Fenris’ arrival.

Fenris came up to the redheaded elf, who was leaning casually against the counter and eyeing his sword, and took a look at the slate on which prices, nightly and weekly, were meticulously written. “Greetings. Yes, someone named Yevin recommended I get a room here. Preferably with a wash basin, if you have one.”

The woman looked cross at the mention of Yevin and at the implication that her rooms wouldn’t have wash basins. “Never mind Yevin, of course we do,” she huffed, and looked down at a logbook that lay open on the counter. “There’s a room upstairs available, 10 silver a night. How long do you need it for?”

He frowned, suddenly self-conscious of his lack of a plan. “I’m… not sure yet, but I’ll pay for a week in advance.”

The elf raised her brow. “Alright, if you say so. That’ll be 50 silver.”

Fenris forked over the coin, causing a disheartening decrease in the weight of his money pouch. The young woman, however, appeared much happier as she handily dropped the money into a lockbox. Retrieving an oil lamp from behind the counter, she handed him a thick wool blanket from a stack laying in a basket. “Watch the door, Pammon,” she told one of card players, who had resumed their game, and led Fenris up some stairs.

“Food is included, just whatever you see at the fire, but ale is extra, 5 coppers a pint,” she chattered jovially as they walked down the dimly lit hallway, with doors on either side. “I do the cleaning mostly at the end of the week. If you need water, I don’t bring it up myself but I’m happy to heat any you fetch from the well in the market square.”

Sorting through a keyring on her belt, she chose a key and led Fenris to the end of the hallway, unlocking the door on the right. “Here’s your room. There’s a nice big window in this one, and the wash basin is there,” she said, gesturing and walking over to a small table to set down the lamp. She stood for a moment, muttering to herself and counting on her fingers, as if trying to remember something. “Oh yes! My name. It’s Marie-Therese, or Maresi for short. And, before you ask, yes, I know it’s not very elven, but I wasn’t born in an alienage,” she proclaimed proudly, “and my parents wanted to give me a good Nevarran name.”

“My name isn’t particularly elven either,” Fenris replied with a wry smile. “Fenris. It’s Tevene.”

Maresi gazed at him curiously, eyes wide. It was a lot to take in, he could admit: his sword, armour, stature, and finally, his name, which he again had chosen to divulge. “That’s very… interesting. Well, pleased to make your acquaintance, Fenris.”

She enthusiastically stuck out her hand, callused and burned from years of work, which he shook.

“If there’s anything else you need, just give me a holler downstairs,” she called, walking out of the room and back down the hallway.

The room was simpler than his and Hawke’s in Little Llomerryn, but less damp, at least. True to Maresi’s word, a metal basin lay on the floor next to a straw-filled pallet. The window was indeed large, and though it had no panes, large wooden shutters that were closed at this late hour blocked out any light. He opened them and peered down into the street below, noting gratefully that the fall would not be too damaging should he need to escape in a hurry. There was a small table in the room but no chair. At least it had a lock and a rather impressive bolt. Perhaps any Crow assassins sent his way would be slowed by it, though he doubted it. Fenris found himself sighing, missing Felissa’s estate once more, for more reasons than just comfort.

Suddenly feeling exhausted, he set down the blanket on the pallet and his pack on the floor next to it. Stripping down to his smallclothes, he placed his armour on the table. _I’ll oil it tomorrow_, he decided wearily, and after locking and bolting the door, he laid down on the slightly too short pallet. Sleep rushed up to meet him like the waters of a warm, dark pool.

* * *

_He was in Isabela’s bed again. The warm lighting of her quarters was familiar, but this time, the sheets were splattered with blood. Horrified, he scrambled out of the bed and stood at its foot; somehow, his hands were gripping his sword and he was fully armoured._

_“Fenris?” a familiar voice called out. It was either Felissa’s or Isabela’s. Inexplicably, he couldn’t tell. “Fenris, where are you?”_

_Legs shaking, he backed away from the bloodstained bed, sword clattering to the floor. Turning to the door, he opened it and…_

_…he was suddenly a little boy, outside in a brightly decorated marketplace he didn’t recognize. He could hear the joyful shrieks of other children playing somewhere in the square. Running towards the source of the noise, he saw a small elven child stop and wave to him. He paused his sprint and waved back, noticing the lack of lyrium markings on his arms. “Leto, ashost!” the child yelled out in Qunlat, calling Fenris over. Or was he Leto now? _

_As soon as the other child had run off, the crowd of people in the marketplace became denser, blocking Fenris’ path. He tried to weave between them, but kept knocking into the backs of horned Qunari stens and human warriors. Behind him, the sky was turning black and turbulent, just like before, but he felt himself being drawn towards the darkness this time. As if possessed by blood magic, he took one step, and then another, and was about to break into another sprint when a warm hand grabbed his own. He turned to face a dark-eyed, familiar-looking little girl around his age._

_“Fenris, come.” _

_Turning away from the incumbent darkness, he let the insistent tug of the familiar girl’s hand lead him through the crowd. They emerged from the other side into a forest clearing, a deep pool of green light in its centre. The girl had let go of his hand and was now walking towards it. He glanced behind him, trying to see their path, but people in the crowd had become nothing but tree trunks. _

_Looking back at the pool, he realized the girl had become a woman, and that woman was Felissa._

_“I’m so glad I found you, Fenris. We don’t have much time,” she began, not looking at him, instead staring into the contents of the green pool._

_Tears, unbidden, started streaming down his face, and he tried to walk towards her, but his legs felt as if they were locked in place. “What does this mean? Why must you haunt me?”_

_He started wiping his eyes to clear the tears, but the clearing began to swim. “Wait!” he cried, blinking furiously…_

And bolted awake on the pallet in Miva’s Room and Board, face wet. It was pitch-dark; he had likely been sleeping for only a few hours. He was suddenly very cold; he had evidently kicked off the blanket in his sleep, as it lay on the floor next to him. Shivering, he picked it up and wrapped it around his shoulders, knees at his chest, running his hand through his hair. Something about this dream… it had reminded him more of the journey into the Fade to save the dreamer elf years ago, the one he had gotten so angry at Hawke about, than any regular dream. In fact, he was sure that if he had reached out to touch the sheets on Isabela’s bed, the people in the marketplace, even the grass in the clearing, all would have felt no less real than the scratchiness of the blanket, the straw poking through the tough burlap of the pallet, or the cool linen of his shirt against his skin. Even Felissa had seemed more concrete than in his previous dreams. She had been dressed in her fine blood-red leathers, which she had donned before leaving him for the last time, and had stood peering into the fountain pensively, knitting her brows the same way he had seen her do a thousand times. His imagination was cruel. Felissa, to his everlasting and horrendous grief, was now a dream that lived only in his memories.

Fenris laid back down and stared at the rafters of the ceiling for quite some time, thinking about the woman he had lost. Eventually, the sounds of the city awakening began: wagon wheels clattering against cobblestone, horses neighing, merchants shouting to each other, their voices echoing in the narrow alley of the street below. The first soft rays of the morning sun appeared shortly after, peeking through the gaps between the wooden shutters on the window. Reluctantly, he stretched out his legs and scrambled to his feet: it was time to begin the day.

After oiling his armour and donning some lighter leathers and a cloak from his pack, Fenris went downstairs to assess the boarding-house’s breakfast offerings (pork sausage and fresh eggs; city living truly did have its benefits). He asked the matronly elf who had replaced Maresi behind the counter where he might be able to find mercenary work (she didn’t know, but said he’d have more luck asking at a nearby armour shop). The human smith there turned him away despite Fenris’ efforts to hide his ears, but when he went back to the forge, the mousy elven assistant suggested he try a mercenary company operating out of Cumberland’s dwarven enclave.

The enclave, which the smith’s assistant had referred to as the Dragons’ Den, felt to Fenris as though he had stumbled into a deep roads thaig, except for the fresh air and blue sky overhead instead of stone. Intricately carved dwarven stone was everywhere, as were the dwarves themselves, selling in the square everything from nug leather to explosives to “fine dwarven crafts, direct from Orzammar”, which he heard several merchants crying. A fair number of human nobles were perusing their wares, while still others entered and exited the variety of shops in the Den.

The compound housing the mercenary company Fenris was looking for stood several blocks away from the main square of the dwarven enclave. The entrance was guarded by two bored-looking but alert dwarves, dressed in leathers and armed with twin daggers. Both had angular tattoos below their eyes, though one of them had a particularly nasty scar which had carved away nearly her entire left eyebrow. Both straightened up when they saw Fenris making a beeline for the door. One of them immediately stood in front of it, hand on the hilt of her dagger, while the other watched attentively.

“Halt, topsider! What do you want?”

Fenris immediately slowed his pace and raised his open hands slightly.

“I’m looking for mercenary work and was told I might find it here,” he declared, quietly but assuredly.

Raising an eyebrow, the scarred dwarf laughed mockingly. “And what, exactly, makes you think we’re looking for recruits? The Aurum Company is the best in Nevarra, and we didn’t _become_ the best by taking in every stray rat that wanders in off the street.”

Unimpressed by her haughtiness, Fenris smirked and threw off his cloak as the lyrium markings on his chin and arms began to glow as if white-hot. He’d never get used to the feeling of partially crossing the Veil, but in this case, it was an effective demonstration: the two dwarves hadn’t dropped their defensive positions, but their wide-eyed stares betrayed their astonishment.

Fenris released the gathered energy and his body lurched back into reality. Picking up his discarded cloak, he said, “I think you’ll find I’m no common rat.”

Still wide-eyed, the other dwarf whispered something to his companion, and turned heel to go into the compound.

“Wait here,” the scarred dwarf instructed slightly more hesitantly than before. “He will return.”

He did, a few moments later, and gestured to Fenris.

“Our leader will meet with you. Come with me.”

Fenris realized it probably wasn’t the best idea, entering a compound of potentially hostile mercenaries virtually unarmed, but it appeared he had no other choice. He reluctantly relinquished Felissa’s dagger to the dwarven woman, who, despite her clear unease at the recent display of his abilities, jerked her head towards its position on his belt and held out an expectant hand. The three of them entered the compound together.

Usually, when Fenris and Hawke would look for mercenary work in a new city, they would be hired almost immediately given their invaluable talents, take on a few jobs to pay their innkeeper for several weeks in advance, and set about sniffing around for slaving operations. After all, slavers had coin, ruthless competition, and valuable merchandise. Therefore, in almost any city with a considerable slave trade, and barring any crises of moral conscience, mercenary companies could make good money facilitating the business of slavers by protecting slave shipments. Whether the Aurum Company was such a group, however, remained to be seen.

Already, the way the Aurum Company operated was out of the ordinary to Fenris. Firstly, most mercenary bands decidedly did _not_ have massive compounds in the middle of major cities, preferring to conduct their business out of rooms in taverns, where the leader would meet casually with potential new recruits while their members drank themselves into a stupor at the bar. Next, the discipline of the guards at the door had been surprising: they both behaved more like soldiers than rogues, despite their daggers. Finally, as the three of them walked down the hallway and into a small meeting room, Fenris was stunned by the company’s leader.

If not for the clear deference of the guards leading him, Fenris would have entirely overlooked the bespectacled dwarf sitting at the table, poring over some ledgers. While most mercenary leaders were burly loudmouths who could outdrink a Qunari (or otherwise were Qunari), the leader of the Aurum Company was completely unremarkable in every way, not even wearing armour, instead dressed in sensible worker’s clothes. Unlike both the guards, he had no tattoos or scars to speak of, and in fact looked largely untouched by combat, as far as he could tell.

Looking up from the documents, the dwarf peered over his spectacles at Fenris. “I apologize for the brashness of my guards,” he began, and glanced at them critically as well, adding, “recent events have required tightening of our security.”

He finished reading and handed the stack of papers to a dark-haired human woman standing by the table, who immediately hurried away. “As Inga has told you, we don’t typically accept unrefereed recruits. I prefer to identify and approach potential new personnel myself. However, given Declan’s description of your unique… talent, I could stand to consider you.”

The man was polite and calculating, like the nobles of Kirkwall that Hawke had barely been able to stand. Fenris felt as if he’d been judged on several different counts as soon as the dwarven man had set his piercing gaze on him.

“Ah, but where are my manners? Aedan Cadash, at your service.”

Fenris was unsure of what to do, but the dwarf stood and stretched out a hand, which Fenris strode up and shook.

“Fenris. Well met.” He supposed that it was too late to assume a fake name now that the elves of the Old Yard knew his identity.

Aedan Cadash narrowed his eyes, assessing this new information. “A Tevinter elf in Nevarra, looking for mercenary work. Even without your unique abilities, you could be useful. Speaking of which, what exactly _can_ you do?”

It was Fenris’ opportunity to make a case for his recruitment. _I should be careful_, he thought.

“Many things. The ability I showed your guards makes me difficult to perceive on the battlefield. My limbs become less solid, allowing me to pass through objects. I can also produce bursts of energy that can repel enemies.” He neglected to mention the frequent heart-snatching.

The Aurum Company leader was nodding while stroking his chin. “And yet you are no mage,” he inferred.

“No.”

“I see you brought nothing but a dagger. Is this your weapon of choice?” Aedan gestured to Hawke’s dagger in Inga’s left hand.

Fenris couldn’t help but grin. Sometimes, it felt good to be underestimated. “Two-handed sword. I usually wear full plate.”

A tiny, involuntary smile from the dwarf suggested he was impressed. “Very well. Bring your things and talk to Marcel. You can join some merchandise protection jobs and we’ll see if we can use your Tevene for anything. Any questions?”

Fenris shook his head.

“Well, then, welcome to the Aurum Company,” Aedan said, and Fenris took that as his cue to leave. As he exited the room, Fenris couldn’t help but think he had revealed far more about himself to Aedan Cadash than he had intended to. Nevertheless, it had been a successful day. Once he demonstrated his substantial worth in these easy merchandise protection jobs, Fenris would have a stable source of income in Cumberland. Now, though Hawke was no longer at his side, he could honour her memory. Now, their work could continue.


	5. The College

**Time passes in Cumberland. Fenris discovers something sinister. CW: Violence, disturbing imagery.**

* * *

In the months that followed his acceptance into the Aurum Company, Fenris began to prove his usefulness to Aedan Cadash. The first dozen jobs he worked seemed straightforward in comparison to his previous experiences, which consisted of dealing with maleficars running rampant, murderous dwarven cults, and ancient darkspawn. Not to mention his ample days spent hunting slavers with Hawke. The simplicity was welcome: he’d put on his plate armour, threateningly accompany some cargo on a ship or in a caravan, and watch idly as it was loaded into a warehouse. In contrast to his Kirkwall days, nothing ever really happened: at most, a land wagon would be beset upon by poorly-armoured and rather desperate bandits, which Fenris and his compatriots would deal with handily. The ships proved even safer, and piracy was rare. Either the Company didn’t take jobs from danger-prone clients, or Isabela and her ilk were focusing their raiding efforts elsewhere.

By the time that Fenris had gotten enough of a feel for his sea legs to last him a lifetime, Cadash moved him to protecting actual people, which involved a lot of skulking in various Nevarran nobles’ kitchens while they entertained esteemed guests. This, too, was easy enough. In fact, Fenris proved better at it than most of the other warriors at the Company, as many of them were loudmouth career mercenaries with no concept of high society. Though he was loath to admit that it was thanks to his years as a slave, he was familiar with the tiptoeing required to keep humans of high birth happy. Put simply, he knew how to keep out of sight, and he could keep his mouth shut. Fenris would take jobs from anyone, doing anything, too, deliberately building up a reputation in the Company as someone to whom a job was just a job as long as coin was paid, no matter how morally repulsive the requirements.

Perhaps that was why, today, Fenris was finally going to become privy to the secret that Cadash and the rest of the leadership had been keeping for several weeks. It started with a rumour of a big job that the Aurum Company had been hired for, shared with him by the dagger specialist Cajal, a lithe Antivan man who was sleeping with the personnel manager Marcel. “We’ve been hired by some other company,” Cajal had whispered conspiratorially as they walked back to the Old Yard together after an evening spent protecting some countess’ hors d’oeuvres. “Some job that’s too big for them to handle. Do you think Aedan’ll pick you?”

It seemed so, based on the note that had been left in the storage chest he kept at the Company compound. It bade him to meet with Cadash in a small tavern in the Merchant’s Quarter. He also hoped anxiously that the secrecy of this job meant that it had something to do with the slave trade in the city.

Whoever the slavers were in the city of Cumberland, they were professionals, as no one, human, dwarf, and elf alike, had ever actually seen them operating. Unlike his previous investigations, he had been able to identify no local associates, no names of ships commonly used, not even the method by which slaves were brought into the city. In fact, the major evidence he had that there even _were_ slaves being trafficked in the city was based on the impossibility that a major city in a nation that bordered Tevinter could avoid it. The hahren of the alienage had also admitted (out of annoyance, after he had bothered her several times) that elves did disappear sometimes, but she chalked it up to them joining the Dalish. However, there were no clans for many miles and none of these errant elves ever seemed to return or try to contact their homes.

Fenris was becoming frustrated. Keeping an ear to the ground at the boarding-house had served him no better than snooping around the port. Maresi kept herself occupied with the gossip of the traders at the square, or with the personal affairs of the renters. She seemed not to keep track of the elven community, which Fenris knew could be vulnerable to abduction by slavers. He was, however, continually amazed at the kindness and perceptiveness of the young elven woman. He had spent a day a few weeks ago recovering from a caravan attack by slightly better armoured bandits, and in the evening, he observed Maresi sitting by the fire and reading from a tattered old book to the daughter of one of the lodgers who’d been crying earlier. Despite having seen her working throughout the day, scrubbing the floors, hanging laundry out to dry, peeling several dozen potatoes and carrots for supper, and going through the ledgers, she nonetheless had a few moments to spare to comfort a lonely child. This perceptiveness for people’s needs, and weaknesses, extended to her dry wit. Her well-placed barbs were often amusingly directed at the lovelorn Yevin, who visited often, being somewhat of an inside joke amongst the long-term lodgers at Miva’s Room and Board. Sometimes, Maresi would remind Fenris of Felissa, but he brushed the confusing feeling away almost as soon as it surfaced.

Of Hawke, he still dreamed regularly, but with less of the urgency and vividness of the first few weeks after learning of her death. Mostly, his dreams now featured her standing guard far away, observing him with sad eyes; whatever dark threat had been chasing him felt distant. No matter how quickly he ran in her direction, she remained on the horizon. Sometimes, she would give a little wave and a wistful smile, and he would wake up. The wound of her passing, though still deep, was not as raw and blistering as before. With time, the anger and agony had subsided (not without the help of copious amounts of bad Nevarran wine). Still, on days like today, when he felt he was on the cusp of progress in his quest, _their_ quest, he longed wholeheartedly for his closest advisor and confidant.

He was grateful that Isabela had not tried to contact him. No news arrived from Varric, either, though Fenris’ lack of response to his last momentous letter certainly didn’t invite further correspondence. Rumour of the triumph of the Inquisition in reconciling the Empress and her marquise at Halamshiral had reached Cumberland, effectively ending the Orlesian civil war. Fenris could hardly feel the same: to him, the fabled Dalish elf with the mark of Andraste, destined to save the world, would always seem in some way responsible for Hawke’s death. In truth, in Cumberland, the world didn’t seem to need saving – though there was talk of Tevinter influence in the court and errant Mortalatasi residing in the College of Magi, Nevarrans rarely took that as cause for alarm. For once, Fenris was not privy to how the latest world crisis was being solved. He preferred it that way.

While the Inquisitor was out there dealing with some undefined threat, Fenris was as close as he’d ever been to a breakthrough in Cumberland. Currently, he was walking to the tavern in which he was supposed to meet Cadash – an unassuming place, north of the main market square of the Merchant’s Quarter. He wore his leathers, a wool hooded cloak, and Felissa’s dagger on his hip. The tavern was empty when he walked in, save for the barkeep and an armed man by the door. Cadash’s, no doubt, but Fenris didn’t recognize him. He took one look at Fenris and gestured to lead him past the empty tables and the barkeep into a side room.

Aedan Cadash was mid-conversation with Marcel and a few others with leadership roles within the Company when Fenris walked in. The man who had led him there gave a sharp nod and took his leave, back to his post by the door. The modestly-dressed leader of the Aurum Company finished his conversation and smiled.

“Good of you to have joined us, Fenris, and punctual as always. The others will be along shortly, I expect.”

Though he had worked for the man for months, Fenris still hadn’t gotten used to his subdued tone and extreme politeness. Despite his reserved mannerisms, however, the dwarf commanded immense respect; when he spoke, his subordinates hung onto his every carefully-chosen word. Fenris had tried to probe, but it still wasn’t clear how he had become the leader of the Company. Regardless, he had an unusual charisma that made one trust his ability to make decisions. This was a desirable quality in a leader, one that Hawke had also possessed.

Eventually, others arrived, and Fenris began noticing a pattern in who had been assigned to join this particular mission. Cadash had mustered all of the mages, for one, as well as a handful of former templars. Clearly, this job would require dealing with magic, which was probably why Fenris had been invited. As the room filled to a dozen people, Cadash started the meeting.

“We have been hired by the Blind Men, with whom some of you may be familiar,” he began. Fenris’ eyes widened but he quickly returned his expression to an impassive frown, even as his heart was pounding. He had indeed heard of these Blind Men. This was the lead he had been looking for. Though he knew little about them, the Blind Men were slavers, dealing in people across Thedas, selling them to the Crows and magisters alike. So, they were active in Cumberland as well.

“The work is simple enough,” Cadash continued, “and involves escorting a shipment from its entry into the port to its destination, the location of which you will be informed of the day of. _You_ have been selected,” and at this point the dwarf paused, peering at the mercenaries in the room, “because your skills render you better equipped than most to deal with this unique cargo. Therefore, I ask that you do not discuss the details of this job with anyone outside of this room. Please rest assured that you will be well-compensated for those skills, as well as your silence.” He gave a sharp nod, instructed them to direct any questions to Marcel, and exited the room.

Fenris furrowed his brow as Marcel went on to brief them on the details. The ‘cargo’, which was obviously a shipment of slaves, would be arriving in the port of Cumberland in a week, in the middle of the night. They would take the typical route through the sewers that all Company-assisted contraband took, with a special emphasis on spacing out each group of slaves, guarded by a handful of mercenaries. Fenris had been paired with a human mage named Riann, who he had seen in the mess hall of the compound occasionally. He couldn’t show it, but the gears were whirring in his head very quickly now. He only had a week to decide whether to use this opportunity to gather information or to thwart the delivery of the shipment entirely. This decision depended on the abilities of the people he would have to subdue in order to accomplish it, and thus, as soon as Marcel finished speaking, he approached Riann. She was squinting at a wrinkled piece of paper in her hand when he strode up, trying his best to project an air of friendliness.

“My name is Fenris. I believe we will be working together on this mission,” he said, holding out his hand for her to shake. She did so, stuffing the parchment into her trouser pockets, clearly perplexed by his greeting but not necessarily suspicious.

“Well-met,” she mumbled. “Riann. You from Tevinter?”

People recognized his name as such much more often in Cumberland than in Kirkwall, he had found. He nodded. “Minrathous, originally,” he answered brightly, with as much cheerfulness as he could muster. Hawke would have laughed. “I’m guessing you’re Fereldan.”

She nodded, relaxing. “On my mum’s side. I was at the Perendale Circle before the war. Found work here after the blighted College mages made their decision. Didn’t want to get involved with that lot.”

So, Riann was just an ordinary Circle mage with little passion for rebellion. Well-trained, but unlikely to get in Fenris’ way.

“I was in Kirkwall when it all started,” he said with a grimace. “I don’t blame you. We… I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”

His true views on the matter weren’t too far off his feigned agreement with Riann; though, in retrospect, he could sympathize with the desire to escape the detestable treatment the mages had endured in Kirkwall under Meredith’s heel, an apostate and maleficar had blown up a fucking Chantry, killing hundreds of innocents. _Of course_ the templars had gone on high alert, trying to protect people. The mages hadn’t exactly done themselves any favours by taking the opportunity to secede from the Chantry, the very organization that kept them from ravaging the countryside as waylaying abominations. If anything, the war had done nothing to assuage his fears about magic-users, or to sway his belief that more freedom for mages was at its very essence dangerous.

Riann nodded pensively and the conversation grinded to a halt. Fenris took his leave, telling the mage he’d see her next week, and sped off into the night.

Walking briskly back to the Old Yard, Fenris tried to remember what he knew about the Blind Men. Though he didn’t like to recall his life before, the name had been one of many companies that were known to deal in flesh. He could remember nothing special about them from his time serving Danarius, but then again, slavers were as common as tailors in Tevinter. He and Hawke hadn’t come across them in their travels through Ostwick or Wycome, either: the operations they had dismantled in the Free Marches had been smaller in scale, mostly run by groups of Crows or opportunists who sold to them.

He would rifle through his and Felissa’s notes when he got back to his room, he decided, and look for mentions of the Blind Men. A certain restlessness filled him, along with a warm feeling in his gut. It felt… good, he realized, to have progress once again. So good, in fact, that he couldn’t help but grin when he entered Miva’s. Maresi was alone in the main hall, poring over the ledger on the counter with a quill in hand. She glanced up when he came in.

“Evening,” she called out automatically, but put down the quill when she noticed his pleased expression. “What happened to that famous frown, huh? Someone steal it from you?”

Fenris laughed heartily and sat on a stool by the counter. “Something like that.”

Maresi rubbed her eyes and tucked a piece of her red hair behind her ear, smirking. “Good things at work then? Or did you finally visit that, uh, _place_ Pammon told you about? A man comes in here grinning like that, I usually think he’s gone to see his mistress, but you’re not married, are you?”

Felissa’s face flashed before him, and his smile lessened somewhat. “No, not exactly. It’s the Company, I’ve gotten a rather interesting job.”

“Oh, interesting how?” Maresi asked, closing the book forcefully. “Please, tell me. I can’t take another moment doing these sums.”

Emboldened by his good spirits, Fenris obliged her. He had no reason not to trust Maresi, whose inherent goodness he had been observing for months. Besides, who was she going to tell? “We’ve been hired by the Blind Men to transport cargo inside the city.”

She stared. “The Blind Men. So… slavers. Often of _other elves_. And this is a good thing because…”

He realized how it must sound. “I hunt them,” he blurted, and eagerly clarified, “Slavers, I mean. I’ve been in Cumberland for months and learned nothing, now this job has fallen into my lap, and I could finally have the information I’ve been looking for.”

Maresi nodded slowly, her expression unreadable. “Well, I didn’t think I was sheltering a lunatic, but—”

“Wait, you know of the Blind Men?” Fenris interrupted, realizing what she had said earlier.

She looked at him blankly. “I’m an _elf_, Fenris, living in the second-largest city in Thedas, in a country that just happens to border _Tevinter_. I know how to avoid the places and people that make people like me disappear.” Her tone was annoyed. “Where are you even from? I was sure you were just another escaped slave from Tevinter trying to make a new life, that’s why I never asked you too many questions, but seriously? Do you have a death wish?”

Fenris’ face fell, taken aback by her reaction. “I am no slave,” he spat, but softened after a pause. “Though you’re right, I was, before.” He wasn’t sure why he felt he had to answer her, but he did anyway. “I am from Tevinter, as you guessed, but I have… traveled since escaping. I killed my former master when he hunted me down, five years ago, and have been a free man since.”

It felt strange to say it out loud. He never had the only person he would have wanted to tell was Felissa, and she had been there with him through it all. He never thought he’d tell his story to another living person.

Looking up, he saw that the elven woman’s eyes were wide. There was silence for a time. “That… is much more interesting than my ledger, thank you. But you’re still insane. You’re a warrior, yes, but you’re going to what, just… murder _all_ of the Blind Men?”

Fenris chuckled. This he had a good response to. “I was no ordinary slave,” he started, removing his glove to reveal the white markings on his hand, “and I am no ordinary warrior.”

Instinctively, she reached out to touch the markings, but he jerked his hand away. “It is painful to touch,” he admitted, trying not to think of the last person who had.

“What is it?”

“Lyrium. Etched into my skin. It grants me abilities, resistance to magic, for one. I am also able to…” He demonstrated his phasing ability with one of his fingers, which Maresi reacted to with a cry of surprise and a look of wonder.

“Looks like something the College mages would be interested in, if there were any left.”

Scowling, he retorted, “I’ve had my fill of being used by mages.”

“Fair enough,” she replied. “You know, rumour has it that that’s where they’ve been taking them these past few months, the slaves that come into the city. Sure, some of them are taken away, to Tevinter or wherever, but something’s going on at the College.”

He felt his jaw drop.

“How do you know this? I’ve heard literally nothing of this the entire time I’ve been in Cumberland,” he growled, disgruntled.

Maresi shrugged. “People talk, Fenris. You just have to listen.”

He started to protest, but she was somehow right. Hawke had been the one who could make a new friend in an instant, spilling all the local rumours by the second round of drinks. It had taken Fenris four months to find out what Hawke would have learned in four seconds.

The elven woman was turning back to her ledger, the indecipherable expression having returned to her face. “Maybe next time, if I’m in a good mood, I can tell you _my_ life story,” she said quietly, laughing to herself, and opened the book again. He couldn’t help but feel as if he’d been dismissed.

Fenris got up from his stool and walked towards the staircase leading up to the second floor. He couldn’t help but feel he had offended Maresi, but how, he wasn’t sure. However, he didn’t have time to worry about it: he needed to come up with a plan, and quickly.

In the time he had spent at the boarding-house, he had managed to convince Maresi to give him a spare desk to supplement the existing table in the little room. His and Hawke’s notes from before were now strewn across both, augmented by an uninspiring number of parchments containing notes he had taken since arriving in Cumberland. Mostly, they contained the details of the Aurum Company jobs he had been paid to do, with certain locations circled and scribbled specifics remembered later. He looked at them with dissatisfaction and began to sift through, looking for mentions of the Blind Men or the College. Their name was scrawled here and there, mainly identifying their former hideouts that had been taken over by other groups and cleared out by Felissa and Fenris. A sentence, noted by Hawke after meeting with one of their contacts in Ostwick, read: _Blind Men connections, may be useful_. The man had proven more valuable in his capacity as a link to the Antivan Crows, however. _Status: deceased_, said the rest of her notes on the matter.

About the College, he had even less. They had been no reason to pay attention to it until Fenris arrived in Cumberland, and he admitted he had been avoiding it. Apparently, it had been occupied by mage refugees, and he assumed the Duke of Cumberland had repurposed it after they left. His last visit to a Circle had not been pleasant, and he felt little desire to remember the events he had witnessed at the Gallows. He stared at the ceiling for a long time before falling asleep that night. The elation he felt upon discovering the presence of the Blind Men in Cumberland had quickly faded into the frustration of the unknown.

* * *

Fenris arose early the next morning, with the intention of further pestering Maresi about the Blind Men, but she was nowhere to be found, replaced at the counter instead by her elderly aunt and namesake of the boarding-house, Miva. He headed in the direction of the College, clad in a cloak and his leathers but unarmed, towards the wealthy neighbourhood that hosted it. The former palace-turned-Circle was just as striking as every local had claimed it to be, if not more: the white marble façade seemed to shimmer as it caught the early morning sun, while the many windows further reflected the light. A remarkable fountain, containing an orb of water suspended and rotating in the air, stood in the square in front of the College, clearly made possible by magic. The giant golden dome of the College was blinding, rising above the middle of the main façade. This beauty made a stark contrast to the brutality of the Gallows, but Fenris couldn’t help but feel uneasy. People were being captured and brought here; why?

The entrance to the College was a giant pair of ebony doors set behind several great archways in the façade. The city guards stood blocking the way, as Fenris had suspected they would be, and he didn’t even bother trying to speak to them. Instead, he bought a pastry from a vendor next to the fountain and, munching, put on his best impression of a sightseer as he inspected the perimeter of the building.

Nothing seemed amiss, though it was strange that the palace looked entirely undamaged by the mage rebellion and its subsequent refugee occupants. Wandering in and out of eyeshot of the handful of guards around the college, Fenris tried to get a good look through the windows, but most of them had their thick red curtains drawn closed. Perhaps the rebel mages had been replaced by Tevinter slavers? Fenris found it doubtful that the Duke would tolerate such behaviour from his country’s historical enemy in the city. He leaned casually against a building and watched two guards kicking around dirt. One of them laughed, sword limply at his side, and clapped the other on the back. _No way _he_ knows that anything’s going on_, Fenris decided. Either the city guard had suddenly become burgeoning thespians, or whatever was happening in the College was happening without their, and likely without the Duke’s, knowledge. That was something, at least.

It was midday by the time he decided to go home, unable to find a way in. He didn’t have the disposition for climbing and keeping out of sight, and he didn’t have time to find anyone trustworthy who did. Cajal had a big mouth, evidently, given that he had told Fenris about this job in the first place. He hadn’t made many friends otherwise. Not that Cajal was his friend. He sighed, realizing that he felt rather lonely.

The months he had spent in Cumberland had been the longest he had stayed anywhere since Kirkwall, and Cumberland’s cobblestone streets and pastel-coloured buildings had become familiar to him. Life here seemed far removed from Kirkwall, he pondered as he crossed his favourite bridge back across the Cumber, which had entire tiny shops lining its length and felt like a small street while still being elevated above the water. The city wasn’t plagued with the same issues as one that was living through some of the worst years of its history. Sometimes, late at night, when the soreness in his muscles from training made the straw pallet feel like goose down and the drunkenness began to melt into sleep, he thought about how he and Hawke could have been very happy here. It was then that the child from that first dream would smile at him, just before the world drifted away into dreams.

Before Kirkwall and Hawke, after he had gone on the run from Danarius, Fenris had considered himself ruthless, self-sufficient, far removed from the needs of other, simpler people. Felissa had softened him in a way. Her patient insistence on talking through his anger had made him more self-reflective, while her humour had helped him take circumstances in stride. Far gone was the man who had ripped Danarius’ heart from his chest, he had thought, though Hawke’s death had momentarily evoked that brutality again. He felt now as if he was left with the worst of both these men: his anger simmered even while he ached for the relief of sharing it.

The last shop on the bridge sold apples, the temperate climate of Nevarra making them available even in wintertime. He paid for a few and put them in his knapsack for later. Returning to his room in the boarding-house, with Maresi still missing, he changed into his plate armour and decided there was nothing for him to do but finish the job as assigned.

* * *

Fenris spent the next few days training, mostly with the other mercenaries he’d be working with. Riann, his mage partner, got a kick out of his unique abilities, especially once she got the chance to see one of her lightning strikes dissipate as soon as it struck his glowing skin. Fenris would have never allowed this if not for the need to assess her proficiency (average) and particular flavour of magical ability (nervous but controlled), in case he needed to subdue her. Though he kept his ears open, he heard no whispers of Blind Men being present in the compound. And, with every hit of his blade against the wooden dummies in the yard or the shields of his fellow warriors, he seethed with frustration.

It was uncharacteristically cold on the night of the job, and Fenris felt a sharp wind whip past him as he sped out of the boarding-house into the darkness of the night. They were to meet at the compound several hours before sunrise, as the port was not as well-watched in the nighttime. Further, the Company had paid off a few members of the nighttime city guard to shirk their duties for a few hours, lest they hear the squelching of people moving through the sewers below. He uttered a curt greeting to Riann and others when he arrived, and once everyone was there, they made their way to the rendezvous point.

The entrance to the sewers through which most contraband was smuggled by the Company into the city was technically not within the port itself, but within a small cave in an outcrop of jagged rocks along the coast to the west. He and Riann were to guide a group of slaves off a rowboat, into the cave and down to the junction where the city sewers grazed the cave system. From there, the way to the drop-off point, which Fenris knew was the College, would be marked for them.

Fenris watched with dull anger as their assigned group was led off the rowboat by a hooded warrior in nondescript garb. Hand on the blade at his hip, the man stared at Fenris and Riann critically, and after awhile, nodded towards the prisoners.

The poor souls he and Riann were to escort consisted of three humans, a man and two women, and a female elf. All four wore rags; their eyes were sunken and their cheekbones jutted out. The elf’s already large eyes looked exaggeratedly pronounced and he saw them take on a hint of hostility once she looked at him. Something about the pride in her demeanour made him think she was Dalish, though she bore no vallaslin. He could only imagine the disgust with which she viewed him.

The prisoners’ hands were bound, though the bindings served little purpose, as they were so weak that they could barely stumble in the direction that Riann led them. Fenris watched them from behind as their group walked single file into the cave. They did not speak amongst themselves; in all likelihood, the Blind Men would have separated slaves with friendly or familial relationships in order to weaken their spirits.

They reached the sewer entrance. Fenris tried to deduce as much as he could from the prisoners about their purpose here in Cumberland as they hopped gingerly through the crumbling entrance, illuminated by Riann’s staff. He couldn’t understand why they had been treated so badly, especially the humans, who he knew would fetch a good price in Tevinter. He had seen it firsthand. Good-looking, healthy slaves always sold better, but their emaciation, along with the slight limp that the man exhibited, would certainly lower their value in the Minrathous market.

So, their appearance didn’t matter, meaning that they were useful in some other way. And this use didn’t depend on their physical health. He kicked himself internally. Of course! They were mages. Why else would Aedan assign all magical and magic-adjacent personnel to this mission? That was no doubt the reason for the bindings as well. Bound mages could still cast spells, but it was more difficult and thus easier to control.

“There it is,” called out Riann, jolting Fenris out of his musing. She gestured to a mark on the sewer wall: a dwarven rune painted in black next to an arrow that indicated their direction of travel.

He pondered his last question as they made their way through the sewers, eerily illuminated by the blue light emanated from Riann’s staff, trying their best not to step off the stone walkway into the sludge below. Why were these mages being taken to the College of Enchanters? His first thought was of the refugee mages. Had they stayed at the College, and now, having acquired some funds (perhaps from some generous benefactor sympathetic to their cause) were liberating enslaved mages? Perhaps they had no funds, and intended to fight the Blind Men and therefore the Aurum Company, to make off with this cargo?

They turned a corner into a section of the sewers with torches on the wall, and Riann extinguished her staff. They were getting close. Fenris steeled himself for a fight, thinking of how he could appear to fight in earnest, for Riann’s sake, while not overwhelming whoever the refugees could throw at them. As they approached the stone stairs leading to the entrance to the College, marked also by the dwarven rune, a tall woman appeared, dressed in sumptuous black robes with trimmings of red fur. This was no refugee. Fenris’ heart dropped immediately, and he looked around instinctively for an escape route. A Tevinter slaver, in the heart of Cumberland. Though he had been doubtful, he should have known: this was the most straightforward, if implausible, explanation for the slave trade taking place here.

He had to think quickly. The mage greeted them haughtily and yelled at their charges to hurry up and follow her.

“That was easy,” Riann remarked as they followed the markings for the route that led back to port. “Ready for the next one?”

Fenris glanced into the entrance of a tunnel that connected to the one they were following. It led in the direction of the College, as far as he could tell. “Fine,” he replied, and casually added, “I just need to find somewhere to, uh, relieve myself.”

Riann rolled her eyes. “Well, you’re in a sewer, opportunities abound. Meet you back at the cave entrance?”

He nodded, and, looking over his shoulder, ducked into the tunnel he had noticed.

“Don’t get lost!” Riann called behind him.

His heart was beating very quickly. His markings glowed white for a few moments before he melted into his surroundings, following the tunnel, which was much darker and damper than the ones he had been walking in before, an inch of wastewater dirtying his boots. In the distance, he spotted an archway lit by torches on either side. Keeping close to the wall, he approached slowly so as not to make much noise. A mage in similar garb to the tall woman stood in the archway, idly picking at his fingernails and periodically looking in both directions into the darkness of the tunnel. His staff leaned against the wall. No shadows moved other than his, suggesting that he was alone.

Fenris waited for the mage to become distracted again and crept up behind him, clamping a hand firmly on his mouth and holding Felissa’s dagger to his throat.

“Move or make any noise and I will slit your throat,” he said quietly into the mage’s ear, his flesh becoming opaque once more as the mage tried to reach for his staff. The man breathed heavily against his hand and nodded. Fenris maneuvered both of them around so that he could see the passageway. A small landing led to a set of stairs curving left. In front of the landing was a magical barrier, glowing orange like the torches.

“Dispell it,” Fenris growled. The mage had started to sweat and made a gesture towards the barrier. Fenris felt a chill pass over him but his grasp remained steady. The mage, realizing his cold spell had done nothing, started shaking. “Try again,” Fenris said coldly, digging the tip of the dagger into the man’s neck until a small jewel of blood appeared.

With a jittery wave of his hand, the mage’s barrier was gone. Fenris released his grip on the man’s mouth, and before he could say anything or turn around, slit his throat with a sharp movement of the dagger. The mage slumped in Fenris’ arms, and he carefully placed him in a seated position against the wall. Hopefully, no one would come looking for him until Fenris was long gone.

Sheathing his dagger, Fenris crept up the stairs, watching for enemies above. He suppressed a sigh. Here was the creeping he had hoped to avoid. He heard footsteps and stopped, back pressed against the wall. Faint voices, talking in Tevene, passed by somewhere above. He could barely discern the words.

“Fere fieri,” a man’s voice echoed. It was almost done, with “it” being the slave delivery. Riann was bound to be wondering where he was.

“Bene,” replied a woman, possibly the one he had seen, and told him to bring them to the cell once they were all here. The rustle of robes and their fading footsteps suggested they had passed. Fenris took a few steps upwards and realized that the stairway opened into an archway to a hallway that was perpendicular to the staircase. Forcing his flesh to fade once again, he peered around the edge of the doorway. The long hallway was lined with dungeon cells. Immediately across the hall from the archway was a heavy door. Something told him he had to go in there.

Heart galloping, Fenris dashed across the hall after checking that no one was in eyeshot and moved to open the heavy door a crack. His short look inside revealed that the large room had tables laden with books, papers, and flasks containing mysterious liquids, but otherwise seemed unoccupied. Fenris crept inside.

Appreciating that he was running out of time, he grabbed the torch off the wall and went to examine some of the writings. This was useless, he quickly understood. _Venhedis_. He couldn’t read Tevene, and even though it used the same alphabet as Common, he could hardly spend an hour in here puzzling over spellings. The flasks, too, were a mystery to him; he was no apothecary and thus could not guess at the purpose of the thick red liquid contained within them. Another table housing a collection of skulls caught his eye. They were all perforated at the top, but for what purpose, he could not fathom. Though he had seen many disconcerting things through his life as a slave, his travels, and countless battles, this room was beginning to make his skin crawl.

An alcove he previously hadn’t noticed was situated at the back of the room. He quickly strode over and entered, cautiously holding the torch in front of him. In it was a corpse on top of yet another table, surrounded by embalming implements. In the corner of the alcove, most strikingly, was a large red crystal: red lyrium, the kind that had driven the knight-commander of Kirkwall mad several years ago.

Furrowing his brow, Fenris placed the torch into a holder on the wall and approached the corpse, staying far away from the crystal. It was of a young human woman, brunette and clearly healthy prior to her death. The body seemed strangely fresh, as if she were merely sleeping, but she was so still that she had to be dead. Her chest wasn’t moving. The top of her head had been shaved but new hair had grown over the shaved spot. Perhaps this was some form of magic practiced by the Mortalitasi, the Nevarran necromancers who embalmed their dead. He had heard of the Grand Necropolis, where important Nevarrans were entered and preserved for the ages, their loved ones able to visit with them. He remembered being revolted the first time he had heard of it; his time in Nevarra had done nothing to change his mind.

There was a leather-bound journal next to the body. He opened it; this one, at least, was written in Common. It seemed to be a diary of sorts, written by someone named Pascal Anaxas. Flipping to the most recent entry, dated as the day before, he began to read under a section titled “Observations”.

_The subject has survived a week longer than expected (see exp. 34, book 1, page 177). Breathing rate drops sporadically and must be restarted manually – I have used the spell from page 27 in this book to do so six times today alone. Height, weight, complexion have not altered significantly from week 2 (see page 79)._

Fenris skimmed through some descriptions of the subject’s pulse and physical characteristics. She was described as brunette, human, female, approximately 29 years old. It seemed this woman was subject 47.

_The implant location (region 17) has had positive effects on survival, as evidenced by continued survival and no significant weight loss of the subject. Furthermore, when lucid and under duress, the subject is able to manipulate the Fade, though without any physical manifestation of her abilities. This is consistent with results from subject 47, where region 17 was removed and Fade manipulation abolished._

_Further testing following crystal growth is required to determine if implant placement is conducive to magical ability induction. _

He narrowed his eyes, trying to understand what he had just read. They had put something in the body of this poor woman, who, up until yesterday at least, had been alive. And this made her able to manipulate the Fade? Stomach churning, he flipped back in the book, and stopped when he came across an illustration. It showed a series of skulls, with a line indicating “incision location” on a spot on top of the head. _For complete removal_, it read, _larger square must be cut from skull. For implantation, smaller incision will suffice. _

These… _monsters_ were cutting into people’s brains and implanting something, probably red lyrium crystals. Others, like subject 47, were having sections of their brains removed. All in search of removing or augmenting magical ability. And there had been _fourty-seven_ of them.

Fenris’ ears rang with shock, his chest was tight, nausea building in his stomach. The journal dropped from his hand and thudded onto the floor. He was not a naïve man. He had witnessed unimaginable cruelty at the hands of Tevinter magisters, blood magic, unspeakable violence. He knew the world was a dark place, and that those in power would always facilitate terrible actions. Nevertheless, he felt as if the evil he was witnessing here had shaken him to the core in a way that few things ever had.

Suddenly, Fenris heard a stirring from the woman he had assumed was dead. His blood turned to ice as she opened her eyes, glowing red like the crystal behind her.

“Please…” she whispered, her speech slow. Each breath required a gargantuan amount of effort. “Help… me…”

She seemed to recognize that he wasn’t one of her captors. He rushed to the woman’s side, although he couldn’t imagine how he could help her, other than—

“Kill me…” she said chokingly, weakly gesturing to the dagger on his hip. “Please…”

Fenris was filled with sympathy. How many times had he himself wished to die, while incurring Danarius’ wrath? He was glad to have lived, it was true – but in his case, his torment had ended, the pain ceased, his life changed for the better, over time… He could see no escape for this woman, other than death. Evidently, she felt the same, tugging on his armour, not even able to whisper now.

He had to be merciful. Cradling the back of her shaved head, he lifted it up, and plunged Hawke’s dagger deep into the base of her skull.

“I am sorry,” he murmured.

She went limp almost immediately. Gently, he closed her still-open eyes that had ceased to glow. His heart started to race again. He needed to get out of here before he was caught.

Gathering all the papers and books from both the main room and the alcove, he piled them on the table, next to the woman’s body. He looked around, finding an oil lamp, opening it, and drizzling its contents over the woman’s body and the papers. For good measure, he went back into the main room and fetched the flasks of mysterious liquid. Suddenly, he heard the creak of the door to the main room opening behind him, and jumped away from the doorway, hiding behind the wall.

“Jakob, Mistress Dianthia is looking for the log from last month, do you have it? Where are my files?”

The man strode into the room and came face to face with the tip of Fenris’ sword. The torchlight illuminated the shock on his face, pale even in the warm yellow light.

“Are you Pascal Anaxas?”

“Yes, who the hell—”

His sentence was cut short by the sword sliding into his chest. Perhaps, if this man oversaw the project, the knowledge required to repeat these heinous acts would die with him. Unfortunately, Fenris did not feel confident in this assumption.

Taking one last look around the room, he took the torch off the wall, and tossed it onto the oil-soaked body of the woman. He paused to watch the flames catch.

“And she will know no fear of death, for the Maker shall be her beacon and her shield, her foundation and her sword,” he muttered, reciting a verse from the Canticle of Transfigurations. Fenris was not a pious man, but it felt right to do so.

As the flames grew stronger, illuminating the room with their dancing orange light, Fenris snatched a ring of keys from Pascal Anaxas’ belt. Once more rendering his body transparent, he sped out of the room after checking that the hallway was empty. He ran over to one of the cells and saw that the group of prisoners he had led to the Tevinter mage was in it. Their eyes widened with surprise and fear to see him, other than the elven woman, who scowled.

“What are you doing?” she hissed as he started trying different keys on the locked cell door.

“You need to get out of here,” he growled back. The lock opened with a soft click. He tried to open the door quietly. “Quickly, now!”

The humans hesitantly emerged. He knew they expected some trick. The elf woman stared at him cryptically.

“Who sent you? I—”

“No one sent me, now come on and be quiet!”

Shaking her head and pursing her lips, the elf left the cell. Together, the four prisoners followed Fenris down the stairs to the sewers. Pressing a finger to his lips and waving the prisoners forth, he drew his sword and crept down the steps. Thankfully, no one had come to replace the guard slumped against the wall.

They reached the landing. “You did this?” the elf woman demanded, eyes narrowed at him.

“Obviously,” he replied, taken aback by her anger. Thinking of Maresi, he continued, “I know someone who can hide you, but we need to get to the Old Yard—”

“Don’t bother,” the elf woman cut him off, and charged into the tunnel. “Come,” she ordered.

Obeying, the other prisoners tailed her down the tunnel. Puzzled, Fenris followed suit. She came to a sudden stop, and she waved her hand, which had started to glow, over a nondescript section of the wall. Suddenly, the bricks melted away to reveal a hidden tunnel.

“It was not supposed to happen this way,” she announced, stepping into the tunnel while glaring at Fenris, “but this man has forced my hand. Follow me and you will be free.” The three other mages entered the tunnel behind her, but when Fenris felt compelled to follow, she blocked his path.

“It is not your time, Fenris.”

What? How did she know who he was? His eyes widened with shock, but she did nothing to assuage him.

“Flee to your home, you will be safe there. The horrors you have witnessed today are nothing compared to the filth of the Venatori, whose master seeks to enslave the world. Rest easy with the knowledge that _we_ will fight him until the bitter end.”

With that, she pushed him lightly away from the tunnel entrance. As he stumbled backwards, the bricks fluidly reappeared. When he went to touch them, they were as solid as any wall he had ever leaned against. He heard voices coming from behind him, calling out in Tevene to the mage he had slain. And thus, he ran swiftly through the sewers until the pounding of his heartbeat drowned out the furious racing of the questions in his mind, attempting to predict the consequences of his actions this night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sincerely hope there will be a shorter break in between posting this time! This chapter was challenging to write, and it ended up being quite long. I keep being concerned about Fenris acting OOC somehow, though presumably the man he was in DA2 and the man he is now, several years later, should be different, as he and Hawke would have grown together as partners and friends. Let me know if there's anything that sticks out to you! I thought the sneaking around would have been a little bit less Fenris' speed, as I pointed out, but I would think he'd have picked up some rudimentary roguish skills over the years from Hawke. Thanks for reading!


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